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THE  NEW  NEGRO 

HIS  POLITICAL,  CIVIL  AND  MENTAL  STATUS 

AND 

RELATED  ESSAYS 


The  New  Negro 

HIS  POLITICAL,  CIVIL  AND  MENTAL  STATUS 

AND 

RELATED  ESSAYS 

BY 

WILLIAM  PICKENS, 

Dean  of  Morgan  College,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Author  of  "The  Heir  of  Slaves,"  "The 

Superior  Race,"  "A  Visit  to  the 

Art  Centers  of  the  Old 

World,  etc." 


THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

440  FOURTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK  CITY 

MCMXVI 


Copyright,  1916,  by 

THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 


Affectionately  Dedicated 

to 

The  White  and  the  Black  Men  of  To- 
morrow:   A  Faith  in  Whose  Essential 
Humanity  and  Justice  Is  the  In- 
spiration of  These  Pages. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Renaissance  of  the  Negro  Race 9 

•The  Constitutional  Status  of  the  Negro  from 

i860  to  1870 16 

The  Negro  a  Test  for  Our  Civilization 30 

Fifty  Years  After  Emancipation 44 

Grounds  of  Hope 61 

Frederick  Douglass 71 

Alexander  Hamilton 103 

Abraham  Lincoln 119 

Industry    148 

Education 155 

From  the  Christian  Viewpoint 176 

Lynching 190 

The  Ultimate  Effects  of  Segregation 206 

The  New  Negro 224 


THE  RENAISSANCE 

OF 

THE  NEGRO  RACE 

The  Great  Sphinx  at  Gizeh,  which  for  many  cen- 
turies has  looked  with  steady,  enigmatical  gaze 
over  the  plains  and  the  changes  of  civilization, 
scarred  and  marred,  but  in  the  main  enduring  the 
attacks  of  time  and  tide,  is  symbolic  of  much  of 
African  history.  The  oldest  authentic  history  is 
Egypt;  Egypt  was  the  mother  of  civilization.  In 
the  dawn  of  civilization  there  were  no  hard  and 
fast  lines  among  the  colors  of  the  human  race,  but 
it  is  certain  that  the  darker  groups  matured  more 
quickly  and  took  the  lead.  Milleniums  before  the 
wolf  suckled  Romulus,  many  centuries  before  Ho- 
mer sung,  the  black  and  brown  and  yellowish 
peoples  ruled  in  Egypt,  overran  the  civilized  and 
known  world,  and  brought  and  wrought  the  usual 
changes  of  civilization  before  Greece  and  Rome 
were  even  names  in  the  earth.  But  altho  Africa, 
with  its  warm  climate,  its  impressionable  people 
and  its  Nile  valley,  was  fitted  for  the  birth  and 
childhood  of  civihzation,  ,under  the  conditions 
that  obtained  in  the  ancient  world,  it  was  not 
fitted  for  indefinite  development;  old  Egypt  was 
flanked  by  burning  deserts,  and  had  what  was  at 


10  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

that  time  the  unknown,  dark  and  inaccessible  con- 
tinent at  its  back.  It  was  sometimes  to  be  overrun 
by  the  powers  that  grew  in  the  more  open  and 
accessible  region  of  southwestern  Asia,  and  then 
it  was  to  yield  to  the  virile  and  aggressive  people 
who  grew  up  in  Europe  and  who  had  lighted  their 
torch  of  civilization  at  the  lamp  of  Egypt  itself. 

The  black  people  of  this  ancient  world  were  not 
of  low  caste  or  marked  as  inferiors  in  any  special, 
way.  They  were  by  no  means  a  slave  or  servile 
class;  the  blood  of  their  veins  was  poured  all 
through  the  civilized  and  half-civilized  world,  and 
its  traces  are  clear  today  in  southern  Asia  as  far 
as  India  and  in  southern  Europe.  Does  the  trav- 
eller not  notice  the  black  people  among  the  Turks, 
and  the  beautiful  brown  face  that  is  occasionally 
met  among  the  Italians?  It  is  said,  too,  that  these 
African  people  had  a  cotton  industry  before  Eng- 
land, and  that  they  originated  the  smelting  of  iron. 
Think  of  what  the  invention  of  iron  conferred 
upon  civilization.  Our  civilization  without  its  iron 
would  be  like  the  human  body  without  its  skeleton : 
it  would  collapse,  it  could  not  stand  and  go,  it 
could  only  crawl  and  creep. 

But  this  civilization  of  black  men,  after  per- 
forming its  early  mission  in  the  world,  was  to  have 
its  dark  ages.  The  African  world  happened  to  be 
overrun  by  early  Islam  (submission),  instead 
of  by  early  Christianity.  Islam  is  ritualistic  and 
formal  and  fixed,  and  is  not  progressive.  Greece 
and  Rome,  when  they  began  to  awake,  enjoyed  the 
advantages  of  situation,  of  accessibility,  of  a  coast 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  ii 

line  suitable  for  commerce  and  trade,  of  free  inter- 
course and  contact  with  many  other  peoples.  It  is 
known  that  Rome  was  not  an  inventor,  but  that  she 
adopted  and  adapted  the  best  that  she  found 
among  the  subject  peoples.  This  was  her  superior 
genius.  The  civilization  of  Europe  is  the  growth 
and  work  of  many  minds  and  peoples,  the  con- 
fluence of  many  streams.  On  the  other  hand, 
whatever  civilization  was  developed  by  the  iron- 
worker in  the  heart  of  Africa,  was  a  straight  lift 
out  of  his  own  life  and  environment,  a  creature  of 
his  own  generations,  a  sort  of  progress  over  his 
dead  self. 

And  in  addition  to  the  ritualism  from  the  Mo- 
hammedan world  Africa  later  received  a  still 
more  blighting  visitation  from  the  Christian  world 
— the  slave-hunter.  This  abortive  horror  from 
Europe  and  America  came  upon  Africa  as  a  very 
contradiction  of  all  Christian  principles.  This 
emissary  from  the  Christian  world  brought  an  era 
that  was  worse  than  heathendom.  Whatever  civ- 
ilization Africa  had  already  developed  was  cut  off 
and  broken  up.  The  greed  for  blood-money  took 
hold  of  the  tribes,  setting  chief  against  chief  and 
clan  against  clan.  What  need  was  there  for  the 
slow  processes  of  iron-work  and  textile  industry, 
when  a  strong  tribe  could  get  goods  or  gold  by 
simply  hunting  down  the  members  of  the  neigh- 
boring tribes  and  selling  them  to  white  men  ?  This 
trade  in  men,  brought  in  by  civilized  people  from 
Christian  lands,  was  the  worst  blight  that  ever 
overtook  a  continent.    It  is  sometimes  said  by  way 


12  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

of  excuse  that  the  blacks  in  Africa  were  already 
holding  each  other  as  slaves  and  were  glad  enough 
to  sell  slaves  to  white  men.  If  this  were  the  whole 
truth  it  would  not  be  an  excuse — but  it  is  only  the 
half  truth.  The  Negroes  had  a  normal  domestic 
slavery,  such  as  is  found  in  every  infant  civiliza- 
tion, such  as  was  in  Europe  when  Spartan  noble 
held  helot  and  Roman  patrician  held  plebeian.  But 
this  great  commerce  in  men,  with  its  insatiable  de- 
mands, its  cunning  and  its  avarice,  which  changed 
a  whole  continent  into  a  slave  corral,  was  never 
before  known  in  Africa  and  has  never  been  known 
in  any  other  part  of  the  civilized  world.  Is 
there  any  wonder  that  centuries  of  such  ravishment 
should  have  destroyed  African  culture  and  broken 
up  whatever  civilizing  influences  were  at  work 
there?  And  altho  Greece  had  looked  up  to  the 
pyramids  of  Egypt  as  the  lighthouses  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  altho  black  men  had  not  been  marked 
as  special  subjects  for  slavery  before  the  fifteenth 
century,  yet  under  the  influence  of  this  lucrative 
foreign  commerce  in  human  flesh  black  man  and 
slave  became  synonymous. 

"Jove  fixed  it  certain,  that  whatever  day 
Man  makes  a  slave  takes  half  his  worth  away." 

Philosophically  the  pronoun  his  in  this  quota- 
tion can  refer  with  equal  truth  to  the  slave  or  to 
the  man  who  enslaves  him. 

Africa,  which  had  produced  the  Fathers  of  the 
early  Christian  church,  now  had  many  millions  of 
its  people  stolen  and  carried  away  into  captivity  by 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  13 

Christian  nations.     The  trade  in  men  was  profit- 
able in  money  and  made  or  straightened  out  the 
fortunes  of  many  a  noble  house.     The  energetic 
Dutch  wrested  the  trade  from  the  indolent  Por- 
tuguese who  had  started  it.    So  lucrative  was  the 
business  that  the  English  took  it  from  the  Dutch 
by  war.     But  what  providence  was  at  work  here? 
The  Negro  blood  was  being  carried  to  every  civ- 
ilized country,  many  millions  coming  to  America. 
The  Negro  became  the  major  part  of  the  popula- 
tion in  many  of  the  West  Indies,  in  parts  of  Brazil, 
and  practically  half  the  population  in  much  of  the 
southern  United  States.     The  children  of  the  ex- 
patriated slaves  have  become  an  ineradicable  part 
of  the  vast  New  World.      In  the   progress  of 
civilization  they  have  attained  their  freedom  and 
varying  degrees  of  citizenship.    In  Latin  America 
they  are  accorded  a  place  in  civilization  rather 
more  liberal  than  that  which  is  accorded  them  in 
Anglo-Saxon  countries.    This  is  true  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  Negro  has  made  the  most  substantial 
progress  in  those  parts  of  North  America  where 
he  is  in  contact  with  the  Anglo-Saxon.     And  the 
fact  that  he  enjoys  less  equality  there  than  in  Bra- 
zil, for  example,  would  be  very  strange  were  it 
not  to  be  explained  by  the  difference  between  the 
natures  of  the  Teutonic  and  the  Latin  races.    The 
latter  have  a  much  less  intense  race  consciousness, 
which  permits  them  to  quickly  assimilate   other 
peoples.     This  difference  is  noticeable  from  the 
time  of  Caesar  and  the  Teutonic  tribes,  and  is  seen 
to-day  in  the  difference  between  the  cordial  equal- 


14  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

ity  which  is  accorded  darker  people  in  Paris  and 
the  reserved  toleration  which  they  sometimes  meet 
in  London — as  well  as  in  the  difference  between 
the  absolutely  equal  rights  which  the  Negro  enjoys 
in  Rio  de  Janeiro  and  the  fine  bigotry  and  benevo- 
lent snobbishness  with  which  he  is  often  burdened 
in  Boston.  But  whatever  his  condition,  a  provi- 
dence has  given  him  the  widest  contact,  has  scat- 
tered his  scions  in  all  the  earth  and  is  making  him 
one  of  the  most  versatile  races  of  modern  history. 
He  stands  to-day  on  the  threshold  of  a  renais- 
sance of  civilization  and  culture  after  four  hun- 
dred years  of  interruption  by  captivity,  slavery 
and  oppression. 

This  awakening  of  the  darker  and  the  more 
handicapped  people  is  to  be  noted  all  over 
the  world.  Japan  from  the  vantage  ground  of  its 
island  independence,  has  led  off  nobly.  China  is 
beginning  to  shake  off  the  lethargy  and  conserv- 
atism of  thousands  of  years.  The  brown  Hindu  is! 
growing  conscious,  the  Philippino  is  pleading  and/ 
expectant,  and  the  Ethiopian  in  Africa  is  stretch^ 
ing  forth  his  hand.  In  spite  of  the  traditions  of 
the  slave-hunt  and  the  repressive  measures  of  the 
Christian  foreigner  in  Africa,  the  natives  are  said 
to  have  captured  the  unskilled  labor  market  and 
to  be  encroaching  upon  the  skilled  labor  of  the 
whites.  They  are  even  clamoring  for  the  vote  in 
the  aboriginal  land  of  their  fathers.  What  is  to 
be  the  future  of  the  African  in  Africa  ?  When  the 
Sphinx  speaks,  what  will  he  say?  In  the  West 
Indies   the   blacks   are    asking   and    receiving   a 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  15 

greater  share  in  their  own  government.  In  the 
United  States  during  the  few  years  of  their  free- 
dom the  colored  people  have  made  a  material,  in- 
tellectual and  moral  progress  which  Is  wondered 
at  even  by  the  white  people  among  whom  they  live 
— and  yet  they  are  stoutly  held  back  and  hindered 
in  civil  and  political  development.  And  they  are 
now  awakening  to  the  truth  that  they  must  advance 
along  all  lines  to  make  their  advancement  secure  1 
that  they  must  "straighten  out  their  front,"  as  they 
say  in  the  European  war.  The  struggle  of  fifty 
years  has  made  them  know  that  their  position  in 
this  civilization  cannot  be  secure  unless  they  have 
the  full  citizenship  of  the  country.  These  essays 
aim  to  voice  that  aspiration.  Conditions  will  be 
described  from  different  viewpoints,  without  un- 
necessary repetition.  The  condition  of  the  Amer- 
ican Negro  is  hardly  sufficiently  known  to  the 
members  of  his  own  race.  The  history  of  the.race 
has  been  distorted  j^r^burled  In  contempt.  But 
along  with  the  great  advance  which  the  Negro  can 
be  expected  to  Biake,ia  the  United  States  in  the 
next  fifty  years,  every  f^w  years  should  se.e  a  book 
up  to  date  on  the  general  subject  of  "The  Renais- 
sance of  the  Negro  Race"  or  "The  New  Negro," 
the  subjects  respectively  of  the  first  and  last  essays 
of  this  volume. 


THE  CONSTITUTIONAL  STATUS  OF 
THE  NEGRO  FROM  i860  TO  1870 

? 

The  second  decade  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  the  most  epochal  period  in 
American  legal  history  since  the  time  of  the  origin 
of  the  national  constitution.  So  far  as  the  Amer- 
ican Negro  is  concerned,  this  period  marks  the 
greatest  possible  changes  in  legal  and  constitu- 
tional status.  Three  years  before  the  opening  of 
this  decade  the  highest  court  of  the  nation  had  de- 
.clared  the  Negro  to  have  only  the  status  of  the 
hower  animals,  while  at  the  close  of  the  decade  the 
Negro  had  acquired  a  status  in  the  organic  law  of 
the  land  which  entitled  him  to  membership  in  the 
Supreme  Court  itself.  In  this  period  the  Negro 
changed  from  a  chattel  to  a  person,  from  an  ani- 
mal to  a  man,  from  a  slave  to  a  citizen,  so  far  as 
the  supreme  law  of  the  land  is  concerned. 

This  period  also  contains  the  two  extremes  in 
the  scale  of  discriminations  against  the  American 
Negro  in  statute  law.  Before  this  period  there 
were  comparatively  few  statutory  discriminations 
against  the  black  race  in  the  Southern  states.  For 
in  that  section  the  Negro  had  no  personal  rights  at 
law,  and  discriminatory  statutes  were  not  neces- 
sary. When  a  discrimination  is  made  against  a 
class  in  statute  law,  it  is  thereby  imphed  that  this 

16 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  17 

class  has  at  least  some  rights  based  on  the  funda- 
mental law  of  the  land.  Therefore,  the  legislative 
discriminations  against  black  people  before  this 
period  were  found  chiefly  in  the  border  states  and 
in  the  "free"  states  against  "free"  Negroes — a 
strange  contradiction  of  terms.  But  this  decade, 
from  i860  to  1870,  also  contains  the  extremes  of 
the  Negro's  legal  status  in  the  South:  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  decade  stood  the  Negro  slave,  at  the 
close  stood  the  Negro  senator;  after  the  middle 
of  this  period  the  South  passed  the  extreme  "Black 
Laws,"  intended  to  nullify  the  effect  of  the  Thir- 
teenth Amendment  as  far  as  possible,  while  at  the 
end  of  the  decade  came  the  Fifteenth  Amendment, 
marking  an  epoch.  These  "Black  Laws"  of  the 
South  were  enacted  between  1865  and  1868  and 
were  inspired  by  the  ratification  of  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment.  They  had  for  their  models,  it  is 
claimed,  the  similar  laws  that  had  been  passed  in 
previous  decades  against  the  helpless  "free" 
Negroes  of  the  North  and  the  border  states.  But 
they  outdid  the  models. 

These  "Black  Laws"  are  worth  considering,  for 
in  them  are  found  a  sufficient  cause  and  a  very 
cogent  reason  for  the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth 
Amendments.  There  is  really  no  need  for  the 
charge  that  these  two  Amendments  were  the  in- 
spiration of  revenge  or  of  the  desire  for  the 
political  advantage  of  the  party  in  power.  At  any 
rate,  such  great  products  of  statesmanship  should 
stand  on  their  merits,  and  not  be  condemned,  even 
if  it  could  be  shown  that  they  were  originally  based 


1 8  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

in  unworthy  motives.  It  does  not  lessen  the  beauty 
of  the  rose  if  the  plant  was  sprouted  in  manure. 
But  the  argument  of  the  ultra-motive  is  unneces- 
sary, for  the  "Black  Laws"  of  the  South  were  the 
immediate  occasion,  and  doubtless  the  only  effi- 
cient cause,  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  After 
the  passage  of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment,  if  the 
former  slave  states  had  accorded  the  ex-slaves 
even  half  justice,  it  is  very  likely  that  the  Negro's 
friends  in  Congress  would  have  quickly  forgotten 
him — ^as  they  have  since  done  in  the  face  of  the 
worst  injustices.  But  it  was  not  unnatural  for  the 
South,  after  the  ratification  of  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment  which  gave  the  Negro  only  the  lowest 
degree  of  freedom,  to  try  to  pass  systems  of  laws 
that  would  cause  the  Negro's  freedom  to  make 
as  Httle  change  as  possible  in  the  social  organism 
and  in  his  relation  to  the  white  race.  Not  to  have 
done  so  would  have  been  evidence  of  superhuman 
foresight  and  self-control.  From  the  standpoint 
of  the  Negro's  interests,  however,  these  laws  v/ere 
"black"  not  only  in  name  and  aim,  but  in  their  very 
nature.  Instead  of  being  the  property  of  a  person- 
ally interested  master,  the  Negro  was  to  be  con- 
verted into  the  slave  of  a  much  less  sympathetic 
society  in  general.  The  "free"  Negro's  lot  was 
to  be  much  harder  than  that  of  the  slave  had  been; 
for  altho  no  longer  entitled  to  "board  and  keep" 
from  his  employer,  yet  he  was  to  be  forbidden  by 
law  to  move  or  to  change  his  employment.  This 
would  have  left  his  wages  at  the  mercy  of  the  em- 
ployer.   It  is  a  law  of  economics  that  the  mobility 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  19 

of  labor  is  necessary  to  the  normal  regulation  of 
wages.  Some  states  absolutely  forbade  the  freed- 
men  to  engage  in  skilled  work,  leaving  for  them 
only  the  most  menial  and  least  profitable  occupa- 
tions. In  the  famous  old  state  of  South  Carolina 
the  employer  was  to  be  allowed  to  inflict  corporal 
punishment,  or  as  the  euphemism  of  the  law  put 
it,  to  "moderately  correct"  the  servants.  "Mas- 
ter" and  "servant"  were  the  terms  used  in  these 
laws, — not  employer  and  employee.  The  vagrancy 
laws  and  laws  of  apprenticeship  were  all  of  a  na- 
ture to  entrap  the  ignorant  and  take  advantage  of 
the  weak.  Famous  old  South  Carolina  even  sought 
to  regulate  the  amount  of  "politeness"  due  from 
the  "servant"  to  the  "master's  family." 

In  the  face  of  all  these  stereotyped  facts,  why 
should  any  honest  student  of  history  have  to  resort 
to  any  intangible  and  indefinite  thing  like  a  feeling 
of  revenge  or  a  desire  for  political  and  party  ad- 
vantage as  an  explanation  of  the  motives  of  those 
who  conceived  and  passed  the  Fourteenth  Amend- 
ment? This  Amendment  was  passed  by  the  friends 
of  freedom  to  k  e  e  p  the  Thirteenth  Amendment 
from  being  a  mere  farce.  They  sought  thereby  to 
secure  for  the  Negro  the  protecting  power  of  the 
ballot,  as  the  only  effective  means  of  influencing 
his  civil  and  political  interests  in  a  government  like 
this.  There  was  no  thought  or  hope  of  making 
him  dominant  in  a  country  that  was  predominantly 
white.  But  the  backers  of  the  Amendment  sought 
to  lead  the  state  governments  to  this  reasonable 
end  by  inducing  rather  than  compelling  them.  The 


20  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

effect  of  this  amendment  was  to  be  based  on  impar- 
tial mathematics,  and  the  choice  was  to  be  left  to 
the  majority  of  the  voters  of  the  state.  The  state 
was  simply  not  to  have  a  power  in  the  national 
government  based  on  a  population  which  the  state 
itself  did  not  recognize  as  a  part  of  its  own  citi- 
zenry. 

Up  to  1865  nearly  all  of  the  states  of  the  Union 
had  restricted  the  right  to  vote  to  white  men.  After 
the  Negro  was  freed  some  Northern  states  volun- 
tarily removed  this  restriction.  The  friends  of 
freedom  hoped  that  the  Fourteenth  Amendment 
would  induce  others  to  do  so,  by  making  it  to  the 
advantage  of  their  national  representative  power. 
But  from  the  ratification  of  the  Amendment  in 
1868  to  1870  not  a  single  state,  with  the  sole  ex- 
ception of  Minnesota,  heeded  the  warning  or 
yielded  to  the  inducement  of  the  suffrage  clause  of 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment.  And  it  might  be 
noted  in  passing  that  there  were  not  enough  Ne- 
groes in  Minnesota  to  make  any  difference  either 
way.  Up  to  1870  fourteen  states  still  restricted 
the  suffrage  to  white  men.  This  obstinacy  on  the 
part  of  the  reactionaries  caused  the  friends  of  free- 
dom in  1870  to  ratify  the  Fifteenth  Amendment, 
which  substituted  must  for  persuasion  and  vir- 
tually penalized  discrimination  against  any  race  in 
the  matter  of  the  suffrage.  What  evidence  is  there 
that  any  one  of  these  steps  was  taken  in  a  spirit 
of  revenge?  Revenge  usually  acts  in  haste  and 
without  waiting  on  the  development  of  other  suffi- 
cient causes.     The  persuasion  of  the  Fourteenth 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  21 

Amendment  was  not  resorted  to  till  three  years 
after  the  close  of  the  war,  and  when  there  had 
risen  the  plainest  need  for  even  more  than  per- 
suasion in  the  interests  of  justice  and  humanity. 
And  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  did  not  appear  till 
five  years  after  the  war,  when  even  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  had  failed  to  persuade.  Why  should 
revenge  wait  so  long  and  advance  so  reluctantly? 
It  seems  that  the  friends  of  freedom,  who  had  the 
political  power  in  their  hands,  were  slow  to  anger 
and  plenteous  in  hope. 

This  suffrage  amendment  was  to  be  a  bulwark 
to  the  Hberties  not  only  of  black  men,  but  of  all 
men  in  America ;  it  was  directed  not  only  against 
the  "Black  Laws"  of  the  South,  but  against  politi- 
cal and  civil  slavery  everywhere  in  the  nation.  It 
is  interesting  to  note  that  of  the  states  who  were 
members  of  the  Union  up  to  1865,  only  five  can 
be  listed  in  the  honor  roll  of  those  who  have  never 
discriminated  against  the  Negro  voter:  Maine, 
Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  Rhode  Island, 
and  Vermont. 

The  constant  question  raised  by  these  discrimi- 
nating laws  is:  What  is  a  Negro?  When  we  are 
going  to  discriminate  against  a  fellow,  we  must  be 
careful  and  definite  in  pointing  him  out.  And  so 
each  set  of  discriminating  laws  contains  its  own 
definition  of  the  word  Negro,  and  the  definitions 
have  differed  widely.  At  first  in  some  parts  of  the 
North  the  Negro  was  defined  as  any  person  who 
was  visibly  colored.  It  is  plain,  however,  that  if 
the  matter  is  left  to  the  eyes,  millions  of  American 


22  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

"Negroes"  will  have  to  be  taken  into  the  Cau- 
casian race, — and  so  most  of  the  state  legislatures 
reduced  their  definitions  to  the  finer  discrimina- 
tions of  mathematics.  These  mathematical  defini- 
tions vary  all  the  way  from  one-fourth  of  the  blood 
of  the  black  man  to  a  mere  one-sixteenth;  but  some 
laws  of  the  gallant  South  go  so  far  as  to  say  that 
if  one  has  even  one  drop  of  Negro  blood  in  his 
veins  he  is  a  Negro.  Thus  it  is  seen  that  "the 
Negro,"  so  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned, 
is  an  arbitrary  creature  of  law  and  includes  within 
its  scope  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  who  by 
every  law  of  God  and  nature  and  reason  are  mem- 
bers of  the  Caucasian  race,  principally  Anglo- 
Saxons.  For  whatever  the  legal  definition,  it  is 
the  common  practice  in  the  United  States  to  class 
as  Negroes  all  persons  known  to  have  any  part  of 
Negro  blood.  The  white  American,  therefore, 
ascribes  the  same  potency  to  Negro  blood  which 
he  ascribes  to  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ, — that  it 
only  takes  one  drop  "to  make  you  whole."  The 
statement  needs  no  proof  that  there  are  thousands 
of  people  in  America  who  are  related  to  the  Negro 
and  do  not  know  it,  and  others  who  know  it  but 
also  know  that  its  acknowledgment  would  not  in- 
crease their  comforts  in  life. 

It  was  especially  necessary  to  define  the  term 
Negro  when  the  intermarriage  laws  were  being 
considered.  These  queer  laws  have  always  had 
the  support  of  the  vast  majority  of  white  people, 
wherever  the  Negro  has  become  a  considerable 
part  of  the  population,  and  especially  after  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  23 

Negro  was  freed.     I  call  them  "queer  laws"  be- 
cause they  always,  in  spirit  and  in  effect  if  not  in 
letter,  tend  to  make  the  naturally  honorable  relar 
tion  of  marriage  a  worse  crime  than  the  naturally 
dishonorable  practice  of  illicit  intercourse, — whichj 
abuse,  however,  is  practiced  chiefly  by  the  men  of  \ 
the  stronger  against  the  women  of  the  weaker! 
group.     For  this  illicitness  there  is  in  practice  no  \ 
punishment,  while  the  sure  penalties  of  intermar-  \ 
riage  range  all  the  way  from  a  fine  of  one  hundred   I 
dollars  to  ten  years  in  the  penitentiary, — and  the    I 
danger  of  still  more  horrible  extra-legal  penalties. 
There  could  be  but  one  result  of  thus  outlawing 
decency    and    tolerating    indecency, — of    putting 
honor  under  the  foot  of  dishonor, — and  that  re- 
sult  has   been    attained    in    the    United    States; 
namely,  millions  of  interracial  illegitimates,  and 
some  admixture  of  Caucasian  blood  in  at  least 
nine-tenths  of  the  American  Negro  group. 

Such  is  the  American  group  against  which  these 
discriminating  laws  have  directly  and  indirectly 
aimed.  In  the  historic  decade  (i860  to  1870) 
many  forms  of  discrimination  and  distinction 
began  to  appear  in  the  laws  of  the  South :  in  public 
travel,  in  the  courts  and  in  the  matter  of  suffrage. 
In  1865  ^nd  1866  "Jim  Crow"  laws  were  passed 
in  Florida,  Mississippi  and  Texas,  but  not  in  the 
other  states  until  1881,  when  Tennessee  started 
the  new  era  of  "Jim  Crow,"  which  has  since  over- 
run the  whole  South  and  threatens,  as  did  slavery 
itself,  to  invade  the  North.  Is  it  not  queer  that 
this  passion  should  have  gained  such  headway  so 


24  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

long  after  slavery?  It  would  seem  that  the  mon 
the  Negro  advances  in  education  and  refinement, 
the  less  acceptable  he  becomes  to  a  large  number 
of  white  people.  In  North  Carolina  or  South 
Carolina  a  Negro  may  be  taken  into  the  white 
people's  car  if  he  be  a  criminal  or  a  lunatic;  but 
if  he  is  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  it  will  be  a 
serious  offense  against  earth  and  heaven,  subject 
to  heavy  fine, — and  when  his  train  reaches  Geor- 
gia, even  the  conductor  may  be  fined  one  thousand 
dollars!  This  race  distinction  on  the  cars  serves 
no  useful,  honorable  purpose  which  classified  pas- 
senger tickets  would  not  serve.  But  of  all  the 
humiliation,  wrong  and  robbery  possible  against 
a  free  people,  the  devil  and  the  Sicilian  tyrants 
\  working  together  could  never  have  devised  a  more 
ingenious  scheme  than  the  "Jim  Crow"  car. 

As  to   the   courts.     Until    1870   the   laws   of 

Iowa  forbade  the  Negro  to  practice  law;  many 

states  sought  to  invalidate  or  restrict  the  testimony 

of  a  Negro  witness  against  a  white  person;  and 

most  reluctantly  of  all  has  any  state  conceded  the 

Negro  the  right  to  be  a  juror,  even  where  both 

parties  to  the  suit  are  Negroes.     In  law  and  in 

theory   the    Fifteenth   Amendment,     March   30, 

A 1 870,  repealed  all  statutes  and  nullified  all  con- 

'   /    stitutional  clauses  discriminating  against  people  on 

/     account  of  race,  color,  or  previous  condition  of 

/      servitude,  but  in  practice  in  the  United  States  the 

/       Negro  is  still  handicapped  as  a  lawyer,  discredited 

j        as  a  witness  and  almost  universally  excluded  from 

^-- — juries.     This  is  queer  again  in  the  face  of  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  25 

almost  unanimous  testimony  of  the  courts  to  the 
effect  that  the  Negro  juryman  Is  more  IncHned  to 
convict  a  real  Negro  criminal  than  Is  the  white 
juryman. 

The  Reconstruction  constitutions  of  the  South, 
in  1868  and  1869,  following  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment,  gave  the  Negroes  the  ballot.  It  is 
needless  to  say  that  this  was  not  the  will  of  the 
white  majority.  And  It  must  always  be  said  of 
these  Reconstruction  governments  that,  whatever 
faults  they  may  have  had,  they  made  the  first,  and 
up  to  the  present  time  the  last,  serious  and 
straight-going  efforts  to  establish  real  democratic- 
republican  organization  in  the  South.  In  this  era 
the  Congress  of  the  United  States  was  in  the  hands 
of  the  friends  of  freedom,  and  in  1866  the  Negro 
was  given  the  ballot  in  all  the  territories  of  the 
United  States.  On  June  8,  1867,  the  Congress 
gave  the  ballot  to  the  Negroes  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  over  the  President's  veto  and  against 
the  will  of  the  white  Inhabitants.  In  a  popular 
vote  on  the  proposition  the  city  of  Washington 
returned  6,521  votes  against  enfranchising  the 
blacks  and  35  votes  for  It;  while  Georgetown  re- 
turned the  Interesting  figures  of  812  votes  against 
the  proposition,  and  for  It  one  vote.  This  record 
of  fifty  years  ago  is  sufficient  to  indicate  what 
would  be  the  condition  in  Washington,  D.  C,  if 
it  were  left  to  Its  own  devices. 

Such  are  the  facts  of  obstinate  resistance  to  the 
Negro's  actual  freedom,  which  brought  the  friends 
of  freedom  In  Congress  rather  slowly  around  to 


26  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  necessity  of  adopting  the  Fourteenth,  and  when 
that  failed,  the  Fifteenth  Amendment.  I  repeat 
that  if,  after  the  passage  of  the  Thirteenth 
Amendment,  the  legislatures  and  courts  and  other 
creatures  of  popular  suffrage  had  shown  a  genius 
for  doing  justice  to  the  Negro,  it  is  likely  that 
his  friends  in  Congress  would  have  forgotten  him 
entirely,  that  the  two  subsequent  amendments 
would  not  have  been  proposed  and  that  he  would 
have  been  left  outside  of  the  Constitutional  pale 
of  citizenship  indefinitely.  The  Thirteenth,  Four- 
teenth and  Fifteenth  Amendments  put  the  enemies 
of  freedom  successively  on  trial,  and  each  time 
they  failed.  Yea,  even  against  the  direct  decree  of 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment  have  they  defeated 
democracy  by  indirection  and  duplicity.  If  the 
aim  of  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  should  be  finally 
defeated,  it  would  be  the  ultimate  failure  of  de- 
mocracy,— but  there  are  late  indications  that  in 
the  end  it  will  not  fail.  And  of  all  the  many- 
angled  struggle  which  the  colored  people  are  sup- 
porting in  this  country  for  their  advancement  and 
ultimate  security,  the  central  aim  of  every  fight- 
ing line  should  be  full-fledged  citizenship. 

There  is  no  doubt  about  the  truth  of  the  plain 
statement  that  the  Negro  race  in  the  United 
States  of  America  does  not  get  a  "square  deal." 
But  we  observe  frequent  efforts  to  minimize  the 
appearance  of  this  wrong  by  the  ambiguous  state- 
ment that  it  is  "natural"  under  the  circumstances. 
I  call  the  statement  ambiguous  because  in  one 
sense  of  the  word  every  fact  of  life  and  history  is 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  27 

natural;  all  virtue  and  vice,  lust  and  love  are 
natural.  Many  natural  things  are  very  undesir- 
able,— and  fortunately  some  of  them  are  not  in- 
destructible or  unalterable.  It  may  be  natural 
for  the  white  race  to  disfranchise,  "Jin^-Crow" 
and  burn  Negroes,  but  it  naturally  feels  unnatural 
to  the  Negro,  and  he  is  naturally  opposed  to  that 
procedure.  Is  it  not  natural  for  the  victim  to  be 
uncomfortable  under  these  things,  to  complain 
against  them,  to  organize  and  fight  them?  The 
naturalness  of  injustice,  if  it  be  natural,  does  not 
make  it  one  whit  more  just.  It  is  natural,  or  at 
least  it  is  historic,  that  men  will  rob  and  commit 
murder  and  bastardy, — but  there  seems  to  be 
something  in  man  which  is  higher  than  nature  and 
which  fights  against  these  things. 

The  same  sort  of  fallacy  in  reasoning  is  re- 
sorted to  when  the  effort  is  made  to  palliate  the 
wrongs  done  in  one  section  by  stating  the  fact  that 
the  same  or  similar  wrongs  have  been  done,  are 
being  done  or  will  be  done  to  the  Negro  in  other 
sections  or  eventually  in  all  sections  of  the  United 
States.  What  on  earth  has  this  to  do  with  the 
wrong,  except  to  make  it  more  horrible?  Does 
it  justify  wrong  to  show  that  other  people  have 
done  it,  are  doing  it,  or  may  do  it?  If  so,  then 
sin  itself  ought  to  be  the  fairest  thing  in  the  world, 
for  all  men  in  all  ages  and  all  countries  have  com- 
mitted it.  The  poor  sinning  South  painstakingly 
points  out  and  tabulates  every  single  instance  of 
its  own  wrongs  against  black  men  which  can  be 
found  repeated  in  the  North;  and  when  the  North 


28  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

slips  from  virtue  in  the  same  path,  it  cries  out 
Pharisaically  that  such  horrors  are  common  or 
even  popular  in  the  South.  If  mere  ubiquity  justi- 
fies, remember  that  the  devil's  work  is  ubiquitous, 
too. 

Again  I  have  read  books  and  arguments  that 
sought  to  minimize  the  importance  of  the  indus- 
trial, civil  and  political  discriminations  against  the 
Negro  by  saying  not  only  that  these  practices  are 
"not  confined  to  any  one  section  of  the  country," 
but  also  that  such-and-such  an  evil  did  not  even 
"originate"  in  the  South.  We  are  told  with  great 
unction  that  Philadelphia  and  San  Francisco  once 
excluded  Negroes  from  street  cars  altogether,  that 
slavery  originated  in  the  commerce  of  the  North, 
and  that  Jim-Crowism  was  first  met  in  Massachu- 
setts. I  have  heard  that  the  devil  was  first  met 
in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  but  he  is  none  the  less  the 
devil.  And  as  to  origin,  who  cares  where  the 
smallpox  or  the  yellow  fever  originated?  It  is 
their  nature,  not  their  origin,  which  makes  them 
horrible. 

There  is  really  no  room  for  one  section  to 
boast  or  to  proudly  accuse  the  other.  So  far  as 
the  Negro's  experiences  go,  both  sections  need 
to  improve  perhaps  in  their  ideals  but  certainly 
in  their  practices  respecting  democratic  liberties 
and  human  brotherhood.  Let  the  Negro  and  his 
friends  realize  that  the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth 
Amendments  to  the  United  States  Constitution 
represent  not  a  backward  step,  but  a  stride  for- 
ward in  civilization,  and  that  they  were  fostered 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  29 

and  ratified,  not  for  the  sake  of  the  temporary 
burden  which  they  may  have  put  upon  the  white 
race  in  the  South,  but  for  the  benefit  of  all  races, 
at  all  times,  in  all  America. 


THE  NEGRO  A  TEST  FOR  OUR 
CIVILIZATION 

More  than  three  hundred  years  ago  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  came  to  this  continent.  Being  very  reli- 
gious, he  landed  and  immediately  fell  upon  his 
knees;  but,  being  very  ambitious,  he  arose  and 
immediately  "fell  upon  the  aborigines."  At  that 
time  provisions  were  scarce  and  work  plentiful  in 
this  country,  and,  in  order  to  conquer  the  more 
unconquerable  wilderness,  the  white  man  wanted 
the  best  help  he  could  get  and  wanted  to  pay  only 
"board  and  keep,"  so  he  drove  a  bargain  with  the 
Africans,  the  unsophisticated  children  of  the  sun. 
For  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  this  pecu- 
liar economic  system  persisted,  the  white  man 
reaping  the  chief  benefits  of  the  economics  and 
the  black  man  bearing  the  chief  burden  of  the  sys- 
tem and  the  peculiarity. 

This  system  prevented  the  white  man  from  see- 
ing the  black  man  as  a  fellow-Christian  and  fellow- 
citizen;  when  he  read  "Love  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self" in  his  Bible,  his  imagination  pictured  white 
neighbors;  and  when  he  wrote  "All  men  are  born 
free  and  equal",  into  his  political  creed,  he  was 
thinking  white.  Taxation  without  representation 
was  wrong,  of  course,  but  right  against  the  slave. 
The  white  man  thought  black  when  he  read  from 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  31 

the  Old  Testament,  "a  servant  of  servants  shall 
he  be,"  or  from  the  New  Testament,  "that  servant 
which  knew  his  master's  will,  and  prepared  not 
himself,  neither  did  according  to  his  will,  shall  be 
beaten  with  many  stripes."  Little  did  the  white 
man  suspect  that  the  ultimate  test  for  both  his 
government  and  his  religion  would  lie  in  his  rela- 
tion to  that  silent,  accommodating  black  man. 
There  is  one  Negro  in  every  ten  persons  in  this 
country.  How  many  white  American  citizens  ever 
imagined  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  and 
the  legislative  and  judicial  departments  of  all  the 
states  with  every  tenth  officer  a  Negro?  On  earth 
there  are  about  seven  colored  persons  to  one  white. 
Be  honest,  O  white  American  Christians!  how 
many  of  you  have  ever  pictured  to  yourselves  the 
joys  of  heaven  with  seven  dark  souls  to  one  white? 

All  other  nationalities  who  have  come  to  this 
country  since  the  Negro  have  been  more  readily 
accepted  into  the  Anglo-Saxorf's  scheme  of  gov- 
ernment and  Christian  brotherhood.  Two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  of  wrong  relationship  got  this 
civilization  into  the  unfortunate  habit  of  except- 
ing the  Negro.  He  became  the  standing  excep- 
tion to  the  rules  of  civilization.  We  can  help  a 
man  best  when  we  know  his  hindrances.  What 
are  the  industrial,  civil  and  political  hindrances  of 
the  American  Negro? 

Industrially  he  started  as  a  slave,  worked  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  without  a  pay  day,  and 
then  got  discharged  without  credit  or  capital,  when 
his  employers  fell  out.     The  system  had  marked 


32  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

him  as  menial  in  the  eyes  of  his  fellowmen,  and 
had  not  made  industry  attractive  in  his  own  eyes. 
As  a  free  laborer  he  began  in  the  lowest-paid  and 
least  desirable  occupations  and  rose  upward  only 
so  far  as  economic  necessity  demanded.  Indus- 
trial society  intended  that  the  free  Negro  should 
be  what  the  economist  might  call  the  marginal 
employee, — to  be  employed  in  that  margin  of  in- 
dustry where  it  is  impossible  or  difficult  to  employ 
any  white  person.  And  where,  on  the  upper  edge 
of  this  margin,  he  was  brought  into  contact  with 
other  free  Americans,  he  was  to  receive  lower 
wages  or  bear  some  other  distinct  badge  of  indus- 
trial inferiority.  We  see  this  contact  and  dis- 
tinction on  American  railroads,  where  colored 
men  and  white  men  who  do  exactly  the  same  work 
are  distinguished  respectively  as  "porters"  and 
"trainmen."  A  few  years  ago  there  were  some 
Negro  Pullman  conductors  on  a  road  in  the  South, 
but  they  were  officially  designated  as  "head 
porters."  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  wages 
followed  the  designation.  Industrial  segregation 
has  been  the  tendency  north  and  south:  in  the 
South  the  Negro  is  more  largely  employed  because 
he  is  more  needed;  in  the  North  he  Is  less  largely 
employed  because  he  is  less  needed.  In  both  he 
is  the  "marginal  employee,"  the  margin  being 
wider  in  the  South  and  narrower  in  the  North. 

It  is  plain  that  a  permanent  handicap  like  that 
would  tend  to  embarrass  the  whole  life  of  the 
Negro,  for  if  industrial  inferiority  is  to  be  main- 
tained,   certain   other   things   are   necessary   and 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  33 

logical,  like  class  education  and  disfranchisement, 
— a  lower  standard  of  living  and  a  lower  order 
of  citizenship.  For  with  brains  In  his  head  and 
a  ballot  in  his  hand  a  man  cannot  ultimately  be 
industrially  repressed.  The  Negro's  economic 
progress  as  revealed  In  the  census,  when  seen  from 
the  viewpoint  of  this  handicap,  is  exceedingly 
creditable.  When  an  unwelcome  and  beginning 
race  stands  up  against  an  entrenched  civilization 
and  wrests  from  It  an  increased  measure  of  life, 
that  race  possesses  the  strongest  potentialities  of 
civilization.  Look  at  our  humble  possessions  and 
see  how  they  have  mounted  upward  from  zero  to 
a  billion  dollars.  Look  at  us  and  see  how  we 
have  grown  from  three  and  a  half  million  chain- 
marked  slaves  to  ten  million  aspiring  freemen. 

The  relation  of  the  Negro  to  trades-unionism 
shows  that  he  Is  to  be  either  a  help  or  a  hindrance 
to  industrial  freedom  In  America:  he  must  be  In 
the  union  on  terms  of  equality,  or  If  out  .of  the 
union  he  will  be  a  strike-breaker  and  wage-re- 
ducer, a  weapon  of  the  employer  against  the  white 
employee.  If  the  black  Is  pushed  down,  the  least 
that  the  white  laborer  can  expect  Is  to  be  pushed 
down  next  to  him. 

Besides  Industrial  segregation,  there  is  what  we 
will  call  civil  segregation;  and  then  there  Is  the 
natural  tendency  to  class  education  and  dlsfran- 
cblsement.  The  effect  of  segregation  Is  to  handi- 
cap and  thwart  the  Neo:ro's  progress.  Some  try 
to  hypnotize  us  Into  the  belief  tbat  It  means  simple, 
harmless,  spatial  separation.    But  some  of  us  who 


34  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

are  hard  subjects  to  hypnotize  continue  to  see  and 
to  say  that  every  single  fact  of  color  segregation 
in  this  country,  where  it  does  not  mean  absolute 
independence,  means  subordination  and  degrada- 
tion for  the  weaker  party.  We  have  a  right  there- 
fore to  suspect  that  degradation  is  the  aim;  it  is 
at  least  such  a  huge  temptation  that  no  white  or- 
ganization or  community  has  ever  yet  successfully 
resisted  the  temptation  to  degrade  after  segregat- 
ing. Our  various  "jim-crow"  arrangements  are 
an  illustration:  there  is  not  a  railroad  in  this  coun- 
try required  to  furnish  separate  accommodations 
for  white  and  black,  which  makes  those  accommo- 
dations equal.  In  many  cases  the  arrangements 
for  the  colored  passenger  are  unsanitary  and  in- 
decent: overcrowded  cars,  one  toilet  for  both 
sexes,  and  the  white  trainmen  and  rougher  Ne- 
groes permitted  to  smoke  in  the  face  of  colored 
women.  I  sometimes  see  the  colored  waiting- 
room  lined  with  cobwebs,  and  spittoons  that  have 
not  been  emptied  or  disinfected  for  weeks.  In  all 
cases,  mind  you,  the  Negro  pays  equal  first-class 
fares.  However  much  he  may  be  rated  as  inferior 
in  this  country,  he  is  counted  equal  in  the  payment 
of  fares,  fines  and  taxes:  equal  in  the  bearing  of 
burdens,  only  inferior  in  the  sharing  of  privileges 
nd  opportunities. 
In  many  respects  American  civilization  requires 
just  as  much  of  the  Negro  as  of  the  proudest  and 
most  fortunate  Anglo-Saxon,  altho  the  Negro's 
history  in  America  has  not  bequeathed  him  a 
chance  in  the  present  to  meet  the  requirement. 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  35 

The  past  seeks  to  damn  him  with  its  heritage  and 
the  present  casts  about  him  an  environment  which 
aims  to  restrict  him  much  more  than  any  other 
race  in  America  is  restricted.  It  is  not  only  true 
that  we  exact  of  the  Negro  as  much  as  we  exact 
of  any  other  man,  but  sometimes  we  seem  to  re- 
quire even  more  of  him,  to  expect  him  to  be  even 
more  virtuous  than  other  races:  it  is  well  known 
that,  on  the  whole,  Negroes  are  given  much  longer 
terms  and  heavier  fines  for  the  same  crimes.  Yet 
they  are  called  criminals  by  nature.  Why  mete 
out  to  a  criminal-by-nature  severer  punishment 
than  to  a  deliberate  criminal?  Negroes  are  given 
inferior  schools  to  meet  equal  tests;  they  are  given 
inferior  wages  to  pay  equal  prices;  they  are  ex- 
pected to  work  out  their  economic  salvation  with 
no  political  power,  without  even  the  ballot.  These 
wonders  no  other  race  has  ever  accomplished  or 
has  ever  been  expected  to  accomplish. 

Heredity  and  environment  are  the  factors  of 
destiny.  Heredity  is  the  multiplicand  and  en- 
vironment the  multiplier.  The  Negro  is  a  factor 
of  American  destiny :  the  nearer  zero  any  factor  is, 
the  nearer  zero  will  the  product  be.  Justice  can- 
not be  corrupted  for  black  men  and  remain  pure 
for  white  men.  Government  cannot  be  tyranny 
to  the  weak  and  democracy  to  the  strong.  Amer- 
ican civilization  will  be  what  It  Is  to  the  Negro. 

The  effect  of  segregation  Is  felt  In  the  Negro's 
education,  public  and  private.  There  has  been 
much  effort  to  find  a  type  of  education  which 
would  fit  the  Negro  for  the  status  which  the  weight 


36  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

of  American  sentiment  aimed  to  give  him.  If  the 
aim  is  right,  the  educational  principle  is  all  right: 
if  the  Negro  is  to  have  a  special  place,  he  should 
have  special  preparation  for  that  place.  But  if 
he  is  to  be  only  an  American  citizen,  he  needs  only 
such  education  as  other  American  citizens. '  Now 
the  Negro  is  not  only  good-natured  but  often  very 
cunning,  and  some  of  his  leaders  affect  to  have  ac- 
cepted these  limitations  for  the  sake  of  present 
profits.  These  men  are  shrewd,  not  honest.  They 
believe,  as  they  privately  acknowledge,  that  the 
only  way  to  manage  a  white  man  is  to  allow  him 
to  be  quietly,  peaceably,  comfortably  and  com- 
pletely fooled.  The  Negro  is  constantly  trying  to 
manage  the  white  man  as  "Br'er  Rabbit"  man- 
aged "Br'er  Fox,"  by  his  superior  wits:  by  indi- 
rection, circumvention  and  cunning.  The  defense 
of  the  weak  is  cunning.  The  Negro  had  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  of  schooling  in  this  defensive 
art.  Even  in  the  days  of  slavery  the  black  "con- 
jurer" often  had  both  white  and  black  at  his  mercy. 
He  learned  to  give  Indirect  answers,  to  profit  by 
ambiguous  terms,  and  to  get  where  he  wanted  to 
go  by  a  sort  of  broken  and  uncertain  course.  ^My 
father  told  me  of  such  a  slave,  who  had  everybody 
on  the  plantation,  white  and  black,  believing  that 
he  had  the  supernatural  power  of  seeing  Into  all 
secrets.  One  day  his  master  even  bet  a  sum  of 
money  to  some  white  neighbors  that  his  Negro 
could  tell  them  anything  they  wanted  to  know. 
They  caught  something  and  put  It  under  a  barrel, 
all  unknown  to  the  Negro.     The  confident  mas- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  37 

ter  called  in  the  slave  and  asked  him  to  tell  what 
was  under  the  barrel.  For  a  moment  the  Negro 
was  baffled  and  almost  trapped;  but  while  his  mas- 
ter threatened,  he  used  his  ears  and  his  wits.  By 
chance  he  overheard  just  one  word  spoken  by  one 
of  the  white  men,  but  he  did  not  know  whether 
this  word  referred  to  him  or  to  what  was  under  the 
barrel.  The  Negro  knew  that  he  must  either 
make  good  or  beg  for  mercy.  Therefore,  he  took 
this  one  word  and  fashioned  a  sentence  which 
could  pass  either  for  an  interpretation  of  what 
was  under  the  barrel,  or  failing  in  that,  could  be 
taken  as  a  plea  for  mercy:  "Well,  Massa,  you  has 
done  caught  de  ole  coon  at  last."  It  happened  to 
be  a  coon  under  the  barrel,  and  the  white  people 
did  not  detect  the  double-edged  nature  of  the  re- 
ply. Till  this  day  the  Negro  is  seldom  frank  to 
the  white  man  in  America.  He  says  what  he  does 
not  mean;  he  means  what  he  does  not  say.  I  have 
heard  Negro  speakers  address  mixed  audiences  of 
white  and  colored  persons,  and  both  white  and 
black  would  go  away  rejoicing,  each  side  thinking 
that  the  speaker  had  spoken  their  opinions,  altho 
the  opinions  of  the  blacks  were  very  different  from 
those  of  the  whites,  even  contradictory.  This 
is  one  reason  for  the  great  misconception  in  the 
white  race  respecting  the  desires,  ambitions  and 
sentiments  of  the  black. 

The  greatest  need  in  America  to-day  between 
white  and  black  people  is  an  era  of  frankness  and 
honest  expression  of  opinion.  As  long  as  we  seek 
to  fool  each  other,  employing  cunning  on  the  one 


38  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

side  and  insincerity  on  the  other,  we  shall  not  rest 
on  the  solid  foundation  of  truth  and  there  will  be 
live  coals  under  the  smooth-looking  ashes  of  our 
sophistries  and  deception.  We  must  face  facts  and 
tolerate  the  truth,  however  much  opposed  it  may 
seem  to  our  dearest  preconceptions.  We  must 
pursue  the  rule  of  justice  even  if  it  seems  to  lead 
out  of  the  window. 

Now,  as  to  politics,  our  first  impulse  is  to  won- 
der that  nine-tenths  of  a  democratic  state  could  be 
so  opposed  to  the  voting  power  of  one-tenth.  Is 
Reconstruction  the  cause?  But  the  intelligent 
Negro  of  to-day  is  not  the  ignorant  Negro  of 
Reconstruction  days.  Besides,  it  was  psycholog- 
ically impossible  earlier  and  now  must  remain 
forever  impossible  to  know  the  truth  about  Re- 
construction. We  can  only  judge  of  what  must 
have  been  the  distortions  of  Reconstruction  his- 
tory by  analogy  with  the  distortions  of  present- 
day  Negro  history;  and  we  know  that  now,  nearly 
fifty  years  after  Reconstruction,  with  nearly  fifty 
years  more  of  civilization,  Christianity  and  "free 
speech,"  not  one  newspaper  out  of  a  hundred 
dares  to  tell  the  truth  about  the  Negro.  How, 
then,  can  we  ever  hope  to  have  the  truth  handed 
down  from  a  society  that  was  dominated  by  the 
Ku  Klux  Klan?  The  Negro's  argument  for  citi- 
zenship Is  based,  not  on  the  doubtful  past,  but  on 
the  eternal  and  demonstrable  present.  Is  It  a 
question  of  Ignorance  and  unfitness  In  the  Negro? 
The  Negro  can  boast  that  he  never  has,  does  not 
and  never  will  ask  to  be  enrolled  as  a  voter  on 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  39 

any  test  more  lenient  than  the  test  given  white 
men.  He  will  let  the  white  man  "set  the  pace" 
in  the  matter  of  attainable  quaHfication.  Is  it  a 
desire  to  preserve  the  white  race?  Does  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  and  the  present  European  war 
teach  us  that  races  and  nations  are  preserved  by 
injustice  and  bullying?  Finally,  is  it  a  vague  and 
inexplainable  fear  of  the  Negro?  Well,  if  nine 
white  men  fear  one  Negro  on  general  principles, 
they  should  be  encouraged  when  they  reflect  how 
much  the  one  Negro  must  fear  the  nine  white  men 
on  the  same  principles. 

Here  again  is  where  the  Negro  conjurer  comes 
in:  he  tries  to  charm  the  white  man  into  the  be- 
lief that  Negroes  are  not  interested  in  politics; 
that  they  regard  balloting  as  a  mere  empty  form- 
ality which  might  just  as  well  be  left  to  the  leisure- 
loving  and  deluded  white  race,  if  only  the  long- 
headed Negro  is  granted  such  useful  blessings  as 
education,  property  and  police  protection.  The 
Negro  does  not  mean  this.  He  is  interested  in 
politics  and  self-government.  But  he  simply  hopes 
that  the  economic  and  industrial  course  will  prove 
to  be  an  indirect  route  to  these  other  things. 

Let  us  see.  First,  as  to  education:  this  trifling 
pastime  of  voting  elects  the  educational  officials, 
and  the  states  which  have  disfranchised  the  Negro 
have  relatively  cut  down  his  educational  appro- 
priation, in  many  cases  shortening  his  school  term 
and  lowering  his  school  grade.  The  same  preju- 
dice which  pushed  him  away  from  the  polls  tends 
to  push  him  out  of  the  school.     And  now  as  to 


40  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

property  right, — have  votes  any  bearing  on  that? 
Will  money-getting  per  se  improve  the  condition 
of  the  disfranchised  or  will  it  endanger  his  life  by 
making  him  a  richer  prey  for  the  mobocrat?  Votes 
elect  the  taxers  and  decide  the  taxes.  The  power 
that  can  take  i  per  cent  of  a  man's  property  with- 
out his  consent,  can  take  fifty  per  cent  of  it,  and 
then  the  other  fifty.  The  power  to  tax  is  the 
power  to  confiscate,  and  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation Is  confiscation.  But  what  about  police 
protection,  protection  of  civil  rights,  and  fair 
treatment  in  public  places?  If  the  Negro  will 
only  give  up  his  vote  and  his  annoying  insistence 
upon  political  equality,  will  not  the  officers  elected 
by  the  votes  of  white  people  be  so  obligated  to 
the  Negro  that  they  will  be  zealous  in  his  interest, 
while  the  halls  of  legislature  will  fairly  ring  with 
enthusiasm  for  these  admirable  "wards  of  the 
nation"?  That  is  a  flat  contradiction  of  human 
nature :  elective  officers  are  obligated  to  those  who 
elect  them;  legislators  look  after  the  interests  of 
those  by  whom  they  are  sent;  sheriffs  respect  the 
influence  of  those  who  can  vote  in  the  next  election. 
Where  the  Negro  is  disfranchised,  the  white  offi- 
cers who  have  impulses  to  do  him  justice  are  han- 
dicapped; they  must  constantly  choose  between  jus- 
tice to  the  Negro  and  their  own  personal  interests, 
— a  dangerous  dilemma  for  human  nature.  As  a 
result,  in  the  very  states  where  the  Negro  is  dis- 
franchised he  receives  the  least  protection  and  in- 
curs the  most  virulent  attacks  from  the  successful 
politician.    To  get  the  Negro  question  out  of  poli- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  41 

tics,  give  the  Negro  a  fair  ballot  and  he  will  vote 
it  out, — for  if  both  races  vote,  no  candidate  who 
needs  the  votes  of  both  will  drag  the  race  question 
into  his  campaign. 

Fifteen  years  ago  even  the  friends  of  the  Negro 
were  persuaded  to  believe  that  if  he  were  debarrd 
from  the  polls,  the  mob  would  be  pleased  and 
lynching  would  stop, —  that  pampered  prejudice 
would  be  sated  and  abated.  But  prejudice,  like 
most  monsters,  grows  by  that  it  feeds  on.  A  white 
officer  is  but  human  nature,  and  it  is  unfair  to 
expect  him  to  choose  the  safety  of  Negro  prison- 
ers when  society  has  made  such  a  choice  disastrous 
to  his  own  interests.  Some  officers  are  predis- 
posed toward  duty  and  loathe  the  thing  which 
they  must  tolerate:  recently  in  Shreveport,  La., 
when  an  untried  Negro  was  being  hanged  to  a 
telegraph  pole  of  the  courthouse  corner,  the  poor 
sherifF,  torn  by  conflicting  emotions,  instead  of 
actively  opposing  the  mob,  sat  upon  the  court- 
house steps  Hmp  and  helpless,  almost  in  tears  and 
muttering  his  disgust, — a  sight  to  stir  the  pity  of 
the  gods !  Had  the  Louisiana  Negro  had  a  vote 
to  support  that  sheriff,  he  could  have  and  in  all 
probability,  would  have  acted  the  part  of  an  officer. 
/  In  this,  as  in  many  other  matters,  it  is  plain  that 
'  American  civilization  fixes  its  own  status  when  it 
fixes  the  status  of  the  Negro.  Give  the  Negro  his 
ballot  and  let  him  stand  by  American  civilization 
by  active  influence ;  or  take  away  his  rights  and  he 
will  destroy  American  civihzation  by  passive  in- 
fluence. 


42  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Even  the  church  does  not  escape :  on  some  occa- 
sions so  triumphant  becomes  the  spirit  of  barbarity 
that  even  the  white  preachers  yield  and  publicly 
endorse  the  acts  of  the  mob  from  their  pulpits. 
The  church  has  done  more  for  the  education  and 
soul-freedom  of  the  Negro  than  any  other  agency, 
and  it  is  regrettable  that  in  many  instances  it  is 
acquiescing  in  and  exemphfying  the  various  forms 
of  jim-crowism  and  segregation,  thus  lending  them 
the  authority  of  religion.  We  know  nothing  more 
inconsistent  with  the  recorded  life  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  or  which  will  be  more  embarrassing  to 
the  influence  of  the  church  among  colored  people 
in  this  country  and  in  others.  The  church  will  be 
judged  in  this  world  and  in  the  next  by  its  attitude 
toward  "the  least  of  these."  If  the  church  yields 
to  jim-crowism,  what  shall  we  expect  of  railroads, 
steamboats,  theaters,  labor  unions  and  the  United 
States  Government? 

The  Negro  asks  not  pity:  pity  is  shallow,  evan- 
escent and  often  unreasonable.  We  pity  the  over- 
taken criminal.  We  ask  only  for  a  strict  applica- 
tion of  those  principles  of  morality  and  justice 
which  the  white  race  has  been  foremost  in  formu- 
lating and  spreading  in  human  society. 

But  whatever  others  may  do,  the  Negro  has  a 
duty  to  himself.  He  must  continue  to  want  and 
to  work.  By  no  means  must  he  stop  wanting,  for 
that  is  the  stimulus  to  his  working.  He  must 
want  life,  want  civilization,  want  citizenship,  want 
votes  and  equal  opportunities, — and  for  all  these 
wants  he  will  work.    A  man  is  as  civilized  as  his 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  43 

wants  J  The  only  way  to  work  effectively  is  through 
organization :  to  work  as  individuals  is  like  bailing 
out  the  ocean  with  a  quart  cup.  The  Negro  is 
only  one  among  ten  in  this  country,  but  the  white 
man  is  human,  and  if  the  black  man  works  well  he 
will  gain  friends  and  co-operation.  The  surest 
way  for  a  thousand  to  put  ten  thousand  to  flight 
is  by  winning  many  of  them  and  chasing  the  others. 
The  struggle  of  the  Negro  is  not  a  struggle  of 
days,  but  of  decades.  Success  can  be  measured 
only  by  looking  backward  over  the  years.  In  the 
last  decade  he  seems  to  have  advanced  along  many 
lines  but  to  have  retreated  along  political  and  civil 
hnes;  but  like  a  baffled  but  determined  European 
general  he  should  call  that  retreat  a  "withdrawal 
for  strategical  purposes  only,"  and  in  the  present 
decade  seek  advancement  along  all  lines  with 
greater  intrepidity  than  ever. 


FIFTY  YEARS  AFTER  EMANCIPATION 

FIFTY  YEARS  I  Half  a  century  is  but  half 
a  day  in  the  thought  of  God  and  in  the  life  of  a 
race.  It  is  scarcely  the  earthly  hfe-time  of  one 
full-grown  human  mind.  A  race  which  in  so  brief 
a  space  can  learn  most  of  the  lessons  of  civiHza- 
tion,  is  indeed  a  precocious  race. 

From  the  middle  of  the  15th  century  for  four 
hundred  years,  from  the  time  when  Henry  the 
Navigator,  of  Portugal,  accepted  ten  Negroes  as 
ransom  for  captive  Moors  till  the  time  of  Amer- 
ican Emancipation,  Africa  had  been  the  world's 
big  game  preserve  for  the  hunter  of  black  slaves. 
The  system  was  on  the  verge  of  decline  in  Europe 
when  the  New  World  with  its  uncultivated  wilds 
offered  new  fields  and  fresh  motives  for  the  pro- 
pagation of  human  slavery.  Again  by  the  middle 
pf  the  19th  century  most  of  the  civilized  world 
had  come  to  regard  slavery  as  a  crime  against 
humanity,  a  contradiction  to  the  Christian  reli- 
gion and  a  menace  to  the  freedom  of  the  free. 
Even  Russia  abolished  serfdom.  Most  of  the 
Spanish-American  States  had  fallen  into  line,  some 
of  them  writing  emancipation  and  freedom  into 
their  new  constitutions.  But  in  this  progressive 
movement  three  parts  of  the  Western  World 
44 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  45 

lagged  behind  —  Brazil,  Cuba  and  the  Southern 

United  States. 

Mammon,  who  is  the  creating  and  sustain- 
ing god  of  slavery,  fought  mightily  to  perpetuate 
the  system  in  America.  Humanity  and  religion 
and  patriotism  were  all  about  to  yield  to  men's 
pockets  and  stomachs, — luxury  and  avarice,  those 
twin  pests  which,  according  to  Cato  the  Censor, 
have  ever  been  the  ruin  of  every  state.  Even  the 
Church,  whose  God  is  the  Lord,  bowed  to  its  arch 
and  ancient  enemy  Mammon.  The  "Colonization 
Journal,"  published  not  so  much  in  the  interest  of 
Liberia  as  in  the  interest  of  getting  the  free  Ne- 
groes out  of  the  United  States,  declaring  them  to 
be  "a  greater  nuisance  than  slaves,"  said  "You 
cannot  abolish  slavery,  for  God  is  pledged  to  sus- 
tain it."  The  Church  was  corrupted  and  God  was 
slandered. 

But  the  modern  slave  had  something  which  the 
ancient  slave  had  not,— an  ABOLITIONIST,— 
Garrison  and  Philips  and  John  Brown  and  Fred- 
erick Douglass, — the  best  conscience  of  the  white 
race  and  the  best  courage  of  the  black.  The  run- 
away slave  was  the  pioneer  abolitionist;  he  was 
the  appointed  creator  of  antislavery  sentiment, — 
an  avenger  born  from  the  womb  of  slavery  for 
slaverv's  own  destruction.  "Wherever  he  went 
with  the  stripes  of  his  back  and  the  eloquence  of 
his  tongue  he  fired  the  hearts  of  men. 

"Who  would  be  free  themselves  must  strike  the 
blow."  The  runaway  Negro  was  the  vanguard, 
the  first  hero  in  the  struggle  to  free  his  race.         ^) 


46  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

The  result  was  war.  And  the  result  of  war,  tho 
not  its  purpose,  was  freedom.  It  is  one  of  the 
mysteries  of  Providence  that  slavery  caused  a  war 
about  something  else,  and  that  this  war  about 
something  else  had  for  its  most  beneficent  result 
the  abolition  of  slavery.  When  brave  black  men 
answered  the  reluctant  call  of  the  hard  pressed 
Union  and  came  to  her  defense,  the  war  neces- 
sarily took  on  a  more  definite  anti-slavery  phase 
and  the  proclamation  of  emancipation  became  a 
"war  measure"  in  a  new  sense  of  the  word. 

Thus  snatching  freedom  from  the  issues  of  a 
war  which  had  at  first  considered  his  liberty 
neither  as  its  immediate  object  nor  its  remote  aim, 
the  emancipated  Negro  began  a  handicapped 
struggle  for  existence,  and  a  passive  but  effective 
fight  against  the  efforts  to  practically  re-enslave 
him.  Much  has  been  written  and  said  about  the 
sad  plight  of  the  ex-master ;  but  even  if  the  pathos 
of  his  position  has  not  been  overdawn,  it  was  less 
pathetic  than  the  outlook  of  the  ex-slave.  Upon 
the  ex-master  shone  the  light  of  centuries;  over 
the  ex-slave  hung  the  darkness  of  ages.  The  ex- 
master  by  race  and  blood  and  feature  could  easily 
become  a  part  of  the  very  civilization  against 
which  he  had  fought;  the  ex-slave  was  an  alien  in 
blood,  with  the  indelible  birthmark  on  his  fore- 
head, destined  to  receive  contempt,  made  worse 
by  pity  from  that  same  civilization,  whose  fall  his 
manacle-marked  arm  had  stayed.  The  ex-master 
inherited  the  cumulated  results  of  250  years  of 
toil;  the   ex-slave  was   grudgingly   accorded   the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  47 

threadbare  clothes  which  hung  upon  his  back.  The 
ex-master  had  a  legal  title  to  the  very  ground  upon 
which  the  ex-slave  walked,  while  the  latter  could 
not  lay  claim  to  the  stones  which  bruised  his  naked 
feet. 

Against  such  desperate  odds  the  freed  black 
man  in  America  began  his  passive  and  voiceless 
struggle,  which  for  accomphshment  is  without 
parallel  in  the  records  of  the  human  race.  Mere 
statistics  of  material  progress  do  not  suffice,  for 
figures  cannot  give  a  fair  idea  of  even  the  skele- 
ton of  life.  We  can  count  a  man's  dollars,  but 
not  the  resolutions  and  triumphs  of  his  heart.  We 
can  measure  his  land,  but  we  cannot  measure  his 
ambition  and  his  sacrifice.  We  can  sum  up  his 
material  gains,  but  not  his  moral  progress.  We 
can  know  about  him  and  not  know  him.  Very 
few  white  people,  even  of  those  who  admire  the 
material  progress,  appreciate  the  pluck  and  stay- 
ing stuff  which  in  an  uneven  struggle  have  sus- 
tained the  American  Negro  in  his  half  freedom  for 
half  a  century.  In  population  he  has  had  normal 
increase  under  very  abnormal  burdens.  The 
prophets  of  fifty  years  ago,  foreseeing  the  odds 
against  him,  did  not  think  that  he  could  live  and 
multiply,  and  predicted  his  extinction.  His  death 
rate  is  much  discussed  to-day,  but  if  we  regard  the 
conditions  of  his  life,  the  rate  at  which  he  dies  is 
to  be  wondered  at  not  for  how  large  it  is  but  for 
how  large  it  is  not.  Poverty  and  ignorance  and 
economic  injustice  are  not  good  for  a  people's 
health.     Fairmindedness  would  rather  credit  the 


48  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Negro  with  the  fact  that  he  lives  so  well  under 
such  conditions ;  for  as  large  as  his  death-rate  fig- 
ure is,  it  is  not  relatively  as  large  as  his  poverty 
figure  or  his  ignorance  figure, — his  death  rate  is 
not  as  high  as  his  wages  are  low.  Where  Negroes 
die  twice  as  fast  as  white  people  they  are  gener- 
ally much  more  than  twice  as  poor  or  twice  as 
ignorant,  and  do  not  get  half  as  good  wages  and 
have  not  half  as  good  housing,  as  a  group.  And 
according  to  statistics  of  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment, his  death  rate  decreases  as  his  home  own- 
ership and  general  welfare  increases. 

In  the  matter  of  acquiring  property  the  Negro 
has  been  verily  emulous  of  his  Creator; — for  be- 
ginning with  nothing  he  has  made  his  material 
world.  He  is  reputed  to  have  a  billion  dollars, 
and  out  of  nothing  created  he  it.  He  has  almost  a 
billion  known  to  the  tax  office,  and  we  can  be  sure 
that,  emulating  the  virtues  of  his  white  brother,  he 
has  been  consistently  modest  in  the  presence  of  the 
tax  assessor.  And  how  has  this  been  acquired? 
As  a  rule  the  Negro  must  do  more  and  better  work 
for  the  same  pay, —  and  sometimes  for  smaller 
pay.  Just  as  women  get  women's  wages  for  work 
equal  to  the  work  of  men,  so  colored  people  get 
"colored"  wages.  In  reason  we  should  think 
that  workers  would  be  paid  for  their  work,  and 
not  for  their  sex  or  their  color,  but  in  fact  it  is 
not  so.  The  laws  of  economics,  as  often  the 
preachments  and  more  often  the  practices  of  re- 
ligion, will  bow  to  a  preiudice.  The  South  is 
sometimes  called  a  good  place  for  the  Negro  in- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  49 

dustrlally ;  and  in  many  respects  it  is  a  better  place 
than  the  North.  It  is  said  that  the  Negro  has  a 
somewhat  better  opportunity  to  earn  money  in  the 
South  and  a  somewhat  fairer  privilege  to  spend  it 
in  the  North  ;and  someone  has  said  that  the  chance 
to  earn  money  is  more  important  for  the  Negro 
than  the  privilege  to  spend  it.  This  remark  is  as 
fallacious  as  it  is  shallow:  for  the  chief  incentive 
to  the  earning  of  money  is  the  privilege  of  spend- 
ing it  well.  Money  is  not  an  end  in  itself.  Neither 
North  nor  South  offer  the  Negro  a  fair  industrial 
opportunity,  if  in  the  one  he  can  boast  but  starve, 
while  in  the  other  he  may  eat  but  cringe.  The 
man  who  can  earn  a  dollar  and  cannot  spend  it  is 
no  better  off  than  the  man  who  can  spend  a  dollar 
but  cannot  earn  one.  The  latter  inability  cuts  off 
a  man's  work  while  the  former  cuts  off  his  stimulus 
to  work.  The  two  roads  lead  to  the  same  end. 
The  choice  between  these  evils  is  like  the  choice 
which  the  antebellum  preacher  offered  "Josh,"  an 
erring  member  of  his  flock.  As  "Josh"  staggered 
toward  him  the  parson  remonstrated:  "Josh,  you 
has  jes'  got  to  choose  the  other  way."  Then  sol- 
emnly: "Dar  am  befo'  you  jes'  two  ways,  Josh. 
Broad  am  de  way  dat  leads  right  to  damnation, 
but  narrow  am  de  way  dat  leads  straight  to  perdi- 
tion. Now,  which  one  o'  dem  ways  will  you  take?" 
Josh,  tho  a  double-seeing  back-slider,  had  a  quicker 
perception  for  identities  than  had  the  parson,  and 
replied:  "Well,  parson,  you  can  take  whichever 
one  o'  dem  ways  you  please,  but  if  dem's  de  only 
two  ways  you's  got,  dis  here  Nigger  is  gwine  to 


50  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

take  out  right  straight  th'oo  de  woods."  To  nar- 
rowly circumscribe  the  Negro's  opportunity  to 
work  certainly  leads  toward  industrial  damnation, 
while  to  lessen  his  interest  in  work  by  cutting  off 
his  privilege  to  spend  what  he  earns  in  the  sweat  of 
his  face,  heads  him  straight  toward  economic  per- 
dition. What  the  Negro  needs  for  a  normal  in- 
dustrial stimulus  is  the  right  to  work  at  any  trade 
in  which  he  can  excel  and  the  right  to  buy  and 
enjoy  anything  for  which  he  can  outbid  his  com- 
petitors. 

From  their  attitude  of  opposition  to  Negro  edu- 
cation many  American  people  must  be  put  into 
that  class,  who,  according  to  Sir  Sydney  Smith, 
think  "that  ignorance  is  the  great  civilizer  of  the 
world."  It  would  seem  that  ignorance  has  actu- 
ally been  believed  in  as  a  cure  for  all  the  ills  which 
America  has  suffered  as  regards  the  Negro.  The 
education  of  the  Negro  has  never  yet  been  given 
a  bona  fide  trial  as  a  remedy.  The  public  power, 
the  State,  during  all  these  fifty  years,  has  only 
tolerated  Negro  education;  has  seldom  assisted 
and  never  truly  encouraged  it.  And  for  the  last 
fifteen  years,  since  the  beginning  of  poHtical  dis- 
franchisement, the  public  school  systems  for  the 
Negro  in  the  states  which  disfranchised  him,  have 
been  allowed  to  fall  into  a  decadent  condition. 
With  the  passing  of  the  Negro's  ballot  the  public 
school  official  lost  the  last  poor  incentive  which 
had  spurred  him  to  even  half  justice  to  the  Negro 
school.  The  average  American  public  official  will 
not  heed  those  to  whose  suffrage  he  owes  no  obli- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  51 

gation.  And  in  that,  he  is  human  rather  than 
American.  In  many  of  the  towns  and  cities  there 
is  not  seating  capacity  in  the  Negro  public  schools 
for  the  children  who  apply  for  admittance,  to 
say  nothing  of  others,  who  being  discouraged  by 
the  uncomfortable  situation,  do  not  even  apply. 
If  the  Negro  school  is  in  the  "red  hght"  district, 
the  members  of  the  school  board,  who  owe  noth- 
ing to  black  men's  votes,  may  lend  a  dull  ear  to 
their  protests.  It  sounds  incredible,  and  I  hope 
that  posterity  will  not  believe  it,  but  in  some  of 
our  states,  while  the  pay  of  others  has  been  in- 
creased, the  pay  of  the  Negro  public  school 
teacher  has  been  pushed  down,  until  a  convict 
working  out  a  fine  is  allowed  a  higher  wage  per 
day  than  the  teacher  of  the  Negro  school. 

And  yet,  at  the  end  of  fifty  years  of  nominal 
freedom  less  than  one  Negro  out  of  three  is  un- 
able to  read  and  write.  It  would  seem  almost 
superhuman  to  have  accomplished  so  much  against 
such  odds,  did  we  not  know  that  when  surrounded 
by  dangers  both  animals  and  men  instinctively  de- 
velop means  of  defense.  In  this  case  the  Negro 
has  resorted  to  double  taxation;  he  pays  his  taxes 
to  the  state  and  taxes  himself  again  in  the  neces- 
sary fees  to  place  his  child  in  a  private  school  kept 
by  some  church  or  missionary  society.  In  the 
state  of  Alabama  which  is  practically  half  white 
and  half  colored  and  is  a  fair  representative  of 
the  states  which  have  disfranchised  colored  men, 
there  are  several  large  institutions  maintained  for 
the  higher  and  professional  training  of  white  men 


52  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

and  women  at  the  expense  of  the  public  treasury, 
and  not  one  for  the  whole  Negro  population.  And 
yet  they  will  tell  us  how  many  million  dollars  have 
been  spent  on  the  public  education  of  the  Negro 
"since  the  war,"  which  sounds  big  in  the  aggre- 
gate. But  when  we  divide  it  up  among  several 
million  Negro  children,  extend  it  through  a  period 
of  nearly  fifty  years,  and  spread  it  over  ten  or 
fifteen  states,  the  figure  then  stands,  not  in  millions 
of  dollars,  but  in  pennies.  It  is  generally  assumed 
and  asserted  in  speech  that  the  Negro  is  of  an  in- 
ferior order  of  capacity,  but  it  looks  as  if  indeed 
the  white  people  believe  the  Negro  to  be  a  su- 
perior being:  those  who  are  his  friends  expect  him 
to  do  so  much  with  so  little,  and  those  who  are 
his  enemies  fear  that  he  may  do  too  much  with  too 
little. 

The  one  sufficient  reply  which  the  Negro  can 
make  today  to  all  his  critics,  old  and  new,  as  to 
his  education,  is  this:  nearly  ten  thousand  col- 
lege graduates,  thirty  thousand  busy  teachers  and 
two  million  school  children — and  all  this  with 
much  less  than  half  of  his  just  share  of  the  pub- 
he  educational  funds. 

The  political  history  of  the  Negro  in  the 
United  States  is  full  of  tragedies  and  comedies. 
Before  the  Civil  War  he  was  not  regarded  in 
politics  or  court  save  as  a  chattel, — when  he  was 
a  chose  In  action,  as  the  lawyers  say.  His  only 
constitutional  privilege  was  that  three-fifths  of 
him  was  taken  to  add  political  power  to  his  mas- 
ter,  so   that  the   South   enjoyed   the   unique  un- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  53 

American  distinction  of  being  able  to  vote  its 
property.  After  the  war  he  was  enfranchised, 
and  some  seem  to  think  that  his  early  enfranch- 
isement was  particularly  unfortunate  and  unwise. 
It  may  have  been  unwise  as  man  measures  wis- 
dom, but  it  was  a  very  wise  providence :  for  had 
the  Negro  not  been  enfranchised  within  ten  years 
after  Appomattox,  while  the  rivers  were  still  red 
with  blood  and  the  memory  of  his  heroic  deeds 
was  yet  fresh  in  the  minds  of  his  white  comrade, 
that  man  is  not  now  born  who  would  have  lived 
to  see  the  day  of  his  enfranchisement.  "A  de- 
mocracy has  a  short  memory,"  says  James  Bryce. 
It  may  have  been  unfortunate  for  somebody  tem- 
porarily, but  it  was  fortunate  for  the  Negro  ever- 
lastingly that  he  got  citizenship  before  his  country 
forgot.  The  best  time  to  do  a  thing  is  when  it 
can  be  done.  Reactionary  sentiment  may  not  be 
strong  enough  to-day  to  take  the  14th  and  15th 
Amendments  out  of  the  Constitution, — but  there 
is  certainly  not  progressive  spirit  enough  in  any 
political  party  to  put  those  amendments  into  the 
Constitution  if  they  were  not  already  there.  If 
the  amount  of  energy  displayed  in  efforts  to  divest 
the  Negro  of  his  citizenship  had  been  directed 
into  channels  to  fit  him  for  good  citizenship,  he 
would  be  to-day  second  to  no  citizenry  of  the 
round  world.  Even  Reconstruction,  a  word  which 
has  been  exaggerated  into  synonymy  with  all  hor- 
rors, had  lessons  for  American  democracy.  It 
should  have  taught  the  danger  of  ignorance  and 


54  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

demagoglsm, — ignorance  in  the  black  and  dema- 
goguery  in  the  white. 

Slavery  and  oppression  are  poor  schools  in 
which  to  train  citizens,  poor  for  oppressor  and 
oppressed.  The  conclusion  is,  not  that  an  op- 
pressed people  should  be  deprived  of  citizenship, 
but  that  they  should  be  relieved  of  oppression. 
But  whatever  may  have  been  the  unfitness  of  the 
Negro  in  the  reconstruction  period,  who  can  con- 
vince the  reasonable  people  of  the  world  that  a 
race  which  under  a  partial  freedom  has  made 
such  progress  in  the  short  space  of  fifty  years,  is 
not  now  fit  for  a  voice  in  its  own  government? 
Most  of  our  Southern  states  have  laws  and  con- 
stitutional provisions  which  on  their  face  have  an 
impartial-sounding  phraseology  to  square  with 
the  national  constitution,  but  in  their  avowed  in- 
tent and  in  their  administration  they  aim  neither 
at  ignorance  nor  vice  but  at  the  American  Negro 
vote.  These  laws  are  mere  shams,  and  the  mil- 
lions of  youth  of  both  races  in  the  South  are 
growing  up  knowing  that  these  laws  are  shams 
and  that  they  have  absolutely  no  intent  for  what 
they  pretend.  Is  there  any  wonder  that  this 
youth  should  come  to  regard  other  laws  as  shams, 
— for  example,  the  law  against  murder,— as  mere 
petty  schemes  for  hedging  about  the  interests  of 
one  class  and  permitting  it  to  depredate  another 
class  with  impunity? 

Even  the  "grandfather  clause,"  tho  manifestly 
unjust,  discriminative  and  unconstitutional,  was 
reluctantly  done  to  death  only  after  being  allowed 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  55 

to  live  for  many  years  to  the  great  embarrassment 
of  respect  for  political  justice  in  this  country. 

The  American  Negro's  life  is  paradoxical.  "A 
little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing," — but  for  the 
Negro,  they  say,  much  learning  is  perilous.  His 
race  is  continually  called  the  "child  race,"  but 
full-grown  white  men  of  the  full-grown  white  race 
will  not  compete  with  him  unless  he  is  greatly  han- 
dicapped. He  makes  the  laws  of  the  South  with- 
out being  in  the  legislatures,  and  elects  or  rejects 
senators  and  governors  without  a  vote.  And  the 
part  of  the  comedy  which  he  enjoys  less  is:  his 
very  presence  and  numbers,  where  he  is  disfran- 
chised, makes  him  the  source  of  political  power 
over  which  he  has  no  control  and  which  is  pretty 
generally  used  against  him.  As  a  slave  he  gave 
his  master  three-fifths  of  a  vote  to  keep  him  In 
slavery,  and  as  a  free  man  he  gives  his  oppressor 
five-fifths  of  a  vote  to  continue  his  oppression.  He 
is  condemned  in  many  words  but  feared  in  almost 
every  action. 

A  dozen  or  so  years  ago  the  states  In  which 
Negroes  are  often  lynched  seemed  to  be  saying: 
If  you  will  only  allow  us  to  disfranchise  these 
black  people,  we  will  not  find  it  necessary  to  lynch 
them;  it  is  their  vote,  their  defense,  which  annoys 
and  irritates  us;  disfranchise  them  and  we  will  not 
want  to  murder  them.  Aesop  tells  a  fable  of  the 
wolves  and  the  sheep:  the  wolves  were  ever  ma- 
king war  on  the  sheep,  and  the  sheep  kept  for 
their  protection  a  number  of  dogs.  One  day  the 
wolves  proposed  terms  of  peace,  saying  that  If 


56  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  sheep  would  only  dismiss  their  dogs  they 
should  no  longer  be  annoyed  by  a  wolf,  and  that 
the  idea  of  sheep  defending  themselves  by  dogs 
was  what  insulted  and  angered  the  wolf  tribe. 
Aesop  says  that  the  innocent  sheep  accepted  the 
proposal  and  dismissed  the  dogs, — and  you  do  not 
need  to  be  told  the  rest  of  the  story.  It  is  coarse 
irony  for  one  inspired  with  the  lust  of  gain  or 
power  to  suggest  to  his  intended  victim  that  a  sur- 
render of  his  means  of  defense  will  appease  that 
lust.  The  greatest  possible  aid  to  the  lynching 
spirit  is  to  make  the  sheriff  of  the  county  depend- 
ent upon  the  votes  of  the  lynching  class  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  favor  of  the  victim  class.  No 
greater  burden  could  be  laid  upon  the  weak,  no 
greater  temptation  placed  before  the  strong. 

And  yet  colored  people,  because  they  do  not  as- 
sist in  running  down  a  black  man  whom  the  rest 
of  the  community  is  threatening  to  lynch  if  he  is 
caught,  are  accused  of  abetting  and  condoning 
crime;  while  in  fact  it  is  because  they  are  op- 
posed to  lynching  which  is  the  greatest  of  all 
American  crimes.  They  are  forced  into  a  seem- 
ing favor  for  the  accused:  they  are  making  an 
indiscriminate  defense  against  an  indiscriminate 
attack, — a  thing  which  is  as  inevitable  and  neces- 
sary as  it  is  natural.  The  fact  that  a  black  pris- 
oner can  be  so  easily  taken  from  the  hands  of  the 
law  by  the  lyncher  has  caused  Negroes  to  lose 
enthusiasm  for  assisting  officers.  They  know  that 
black  men  are  lynched  for  having  made  a  neces- 
sary self-defense;   they  know  that  sometimes  a 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  57 

black  man  is  lynched  for  defending  his  wife;  they 
know  that  colored  women  have  been  lynched  for 
defending  their  own  virtue  and  honor. 

And  is  there  any  creature  upon  whose  head 
the  perils  of  this  unnatural  situation  have  fallen 
more  than  on  any  other?  Yes, — the  Negro 
woman.  For  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  she  was 
absolutely  without  protection:  and  for  the  last 
fifty  years  if  protected,  she  has  been  protected 
sometimes  at  the  cost  and  always  at  the  peril  of 
the  life  of  the  male  member  of  her  household. 
Is  there  a  record  anywhere  else  in  human  history 
that  wife,  sister,  mother  bore  such  a  burden 
borne  so  well, — and  lost  no  more?  Endowed 
with  all  the  affections  of  her  race  and  denied  all 
the  tenderness  of  her  sex,  for  the  first  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  her  life  was  one  incessant 
travail.  But  out  of  her  original  vitality  of  wom- 
anhood and  motherhood  she  has  for  fifty  years  of 
partial  freedom  cheerfully  supplied  the  sinews  of 
the  war.  The  physical  and  moral  well-being  of 
the  race  are  largely  within  her  keeping.  Virtue 
is  a  thing  that  is  tried  and  proven,  not  a  thing 
that  is  protected  and  innocent.  Therefore  the 
fmost  virtuous  creature  in  the  United  States  of 
'America  is  the  virtuous  Negro  woman.  Her  re- 
sisting and  enduring  powers  are  of  the  highest 
order.  In  this  she  is  a  prototype  and  prophecy 
of  what  her  race  is  to  be  if  it  will  overcome.  Her 
character  is  often  assailed  in  fact  and  her  repu- 
tation more  often  assailed  in  slander.  But  those 
of  us  who  know  the  Negro  race  know  that  the 


58  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

virtuous  colored  woman's  name  Is  legion  and  that 
her  ranks  are  increasing.  It  seems  almost  ab- 
surd to  feel  the  necessity  of  saying  so, — but  the 
boldness  of  the  slander  elicits  the  defense.  This 
woman  has  honored  her  sex  by  proving  the  vir- 
tue of  womanhood  as  few  groups  of  women  in 
the  history  of  the  world  have  ever  had  the  privi- 
lege of  proving  It.  The  worst  elements  of  both 
races  have  been  her  pursuing  enemy;  and  she  has 
run  the  gauntlet  of  the  double  fire  and  delivered 
the  destinies  of  a  race. 

These  are  some  of  the  conditions  out  of  which 
has  grown  the  demand  for  such  an  organization 
as  the  National  Association  for  the  Advancement 
of  Colored  People,  which  should  seek  to  maintain 
and  advance  the  Negro's  civil  and  political  status. 
There  is  as  much  need  for  such  v/ork  to-day  as 
there  was  for  that  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society  in 
1857.  Some  "new  abolitionism"  must  free  the 
American  Negro  from  the  more  subtle  but  not 
less  real  chains  which  would  perpetually  shackle 
his  mind,  his  spirit  and  his  soul. 

Will  the  American  white  man  forget  how  po- 
tent a  factor  the  American  black  man  has  been 
in  the  prosperity  of  this  great  country?  In  all 
her  labors  and  struggles  he  has  shared, — whether 
as  slave  or  freeman  or  patriot  soldier. vThe  Ne- 
groes of  America  played  a  loyal  part  in  the  perils 
of  our  country.  And  you  know  the  story  of  Peter 
Salem  on  Bunker  Hill  and  of  Crispus  Attucks  on 
Boston  Commons,  and  of  the  black  battalions  of 
other  Northern  and  Southern  States,  who  at  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  59 

call  of  Frederick  Douglass  and  Abraham  Lincoln 
rushed  to  arms  and  interposed  their  bodies  between 
freedom  and  death ;  not  the  freedom  of  the  Negro, 
for  the  Negro  was  already  a  slave,  but  that  free 
government  might  not  perish  from  the  earth.  But 
do  you  also  know  that  Rhode  Island  had  a  Ne- 
gro regiment  in  the  Revolutionary  War?  That 
there  were  755  Negroes  with  Washington  after 
the  battle  of  Monmouth?  That  he  had  about  five 
thousand  Negroes  before  the  end  of  his  cam- 
paigns? That  in  all  of  the  white  regiments  there 
were  Negroes?  That  a  Negro  named  Prince 
helped  to  capture  General  Prescott  at  Newport? 
That  the  Negro  voted  in  at  least  five  states  when 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was 
adopted?  He  helped  Jackson  at  New  Orleans 
and  paid  full  toll  in  the  sacrifices  before  Rich- 
mond. Lincoln  said  that  the  Civil  War  could 
not  have  been  won  by  the  North  without  him,  and 
he  made  the  Spanish-American  War  an  almost 
bloodless  victory  on  the  American  side.  There 
has  been  much  dispute  as  to  whether  the  Negro's 
best  friends  are  in  the  North  or  in  the  South. 
Sometimes  I  am  in  doubt  as  to  who  is  the  Negro's 
best  friend, — but  there  is  one  thing  about  which 
I  have  no  doubt,  and  that  is  that  the  very  best 
friend  which  the  American  white  man  has  in  the 
whole  round  world  is  the  American  Negro.  For 
three  hundred  years  he  has  been  a  part  of  the 
life  of  this  country.  For  fifty  years  he  has  been 
a  large  factor  in  making  it,  especially  the  south- 
ern part  of  it,  what  it  is.     In  the  next  fifty  years 


6o  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

it  will  become  what  it  becomes  largely  because  of 
what  he  is.  Active  or  passive  his  influence  is 
nevertheless  relentless. 

A  providence  wiser  than  men  has  brought  the 
children  of  Africa  and  mingled  them  in  goodly 
proportion  in  this  great  melting-pot  of  peoples. 
After  confusion  there  will  be  fusion  of  thought 
and  spirit.  In  summoning  to  her  hills  and  val- 
leys every  type  of  man  providence  has  given  Amer- 
ica the  finest  position  on  the  whole  battle-line  of 
humanity.  The  fight  here  is  decisive.  Our  success 
at  this  point  means  world-wide  victory,  our  fail- 
ure world-wide  disaster.  In  the  matter  of  race 
adjustment  all  the  lines  of  humanity  will  go  for- 
ward when  we  go  forward  or  fall  back  when 
we  fall  back.  No  finer  ground  could  have  been 
chosen  for  freedom's  last  great  battle  than  this 
young  and  virile  nation  filled  with  all  the  ele- 
ments of  the  world.  The  thought  should  inspire 
the  meanest.  And  let  those  who  fight  among  the 
pioneers  remember  the  distress  and  glory  of  the 
pioneer's  fight — that  against  us  are  fighting 
hoary-headed,  horny-handed  prejudice,  and  greed 
and  avarice,  and  mammon  the  mighty;  while  for 
us  are  fighting  love  and  justice,  time  and  evolu- 
tion, and  God  the  Almighty. 


GROUNDS  OF  HOPE. 

"The  mainspring  of  effort,"  according  to  Hor- 
ace Mann,  is  "The  desire  of  bettering  one's  con- 
dition." Back  of  this  desire  there  must  be  hope. 
Hope  is  the  lodestar  of  human  progress.  There 
can  be  no  strong  effort  without  desire ;  there  can 
be  no  strong  desire  without  hope ;  and  strong  hope 
must  have  some  reasonable  grounds. 

If  the  progress  of  the  Negro  is  to  continue  in 
this  country,  he  must  be  hopeful,  and  his  friends 
must  hope.  A  confidence  in  the  American  Ne- 
gro's future  has  many  reasonable  grounds, — first 

In  history.  If  anything  in  the  records  of  the 
last  three  hundred  years  can  inspire  the  heart  of 
humanity,  with  a  faith  in  God  and  the  ultimate 
success  of  the  human  family,  that  thing  is  the 
tale  of  the  American  Negro.  All  the  way  from 
Africa  to  America  he  has  come;  all  the  way  from 
savagery  to  civilization,  all  the  way  from  slavery 
to  citizenship,  all  the  way  from  ignorance  to  en- 
lightenment, all  the  way  from  heathenism  to 
Christianity, — with  every  inch  of  the  road  made 
hard  or  sternly  disputed.  He  has  had  some  friends, 
but  it  has  not  always  been  in  accordance  with  the 
will  of  the  majority  of  white  men  that  the  Ne- 
gro has  succeeded.  We  cannot  thus  explain  his 
attainment  of  freedom  or  of  citizenship   or  of 

61 


62  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

education  or  of  some  measure  of  wealth.  But  the 
weak  has  literally  triumphed  over  the  strong,  as 
if  some  strange  divinity  were  at  work  in  his  his- 
tory, mocking  opposition.  Single  decades  have 
seen  revolutions  of  opinion. 

His  fellowman  has  for  the  most  part  been  a 
blind  helper  in  the  divine  plan  of  the  Negro's 
advancement.  Those  who  brought  him  from 
Africa  did  so  without  the  slightest  intention  of 
saving  him  from  savagery, — it  was  a  cold  busi- 
ness proposition  with  all  the  selfishness  of  com- 
merce. There  was  not  the  least  thought  of  sav- 
ing him  to  Christianity;  the  god  Mammon  was 
the  only  god  in  the  consideration.  Kings,  poten- 
tates and  priests  shared  in  the  profits  of  the  slave- 
trade,  and  conscience  was  lulled  to  sleep  in  the  lap 
of  luxury.  Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago 
the  Church  on  the  American  continent  held  it  "a 
sin  to  baptize  a  Negro."  Irreligion  and  cruelty 
are  inevitable  wherever  Mammon  is  god.  But 
through  inhumanity  itself  the  first  purpose  of  the 
just  God  was  fulfilled  by  a  bodily  transfer  of  a 
large  number  of  the  race  from  a  country  where 
environment  forbade  civilization  to  a  jand  ^of 
large  opportunity  like  America. 

Then  there  was  the  period  of  American  slav- 
ery,— slavery  which  some  indignant  soul  has 
called  the  "sum  of  all  villainies."  American  slav- 
ery as  a  whole  was  the  most  cruel  institution  of  its 
kind  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  But  Provi- 
dence, partly  through  agitation  of  men  and  largely 
through  the  demands  of  public  policy  and  the  ex- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  63 

actions  of  war,  brought  freedom.  The  American 
Negro's  freedom  can  hardly  be  ascribed  to  the 
dehberate  and  purposed  will  of  his  fellowman. 
Mars  was  mightier  than  Mammon  and  Jehovah 
was  superior  to  both. 

After  the  acquisition  of  freedom  came  the  ques- 
tion of  the  Negro's  citizenship.  After  getting 
freedom  in  a  democratic  government,  it  takes  cit- 
izenship and  the  ballot  to  keep  it.  Freedom 
without  citizenship  cannot  stand  any  better  than 
an  empty  sack.  In  this  matter,  too,  God  and  a 
few  good  men  proved  to  be  an  overwhelming 
majority.  Wise  men  saw  that  there  is  as  much 
hope  for  a  flock  of  sheep  in  a  pack  of  wolves  as 
for  a  voteless  people  in  a  selfish  democracy. 

Accordingly  the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth 
Amendments  were  added  to  the  fundamental  law 
of  the  land,  primarily  to  protect  the  Negro,  but 
secondarily  protecting  every  man  in  America. 
Some  might  think  that  these  amendments  are  veri- 
table "broken  reeds"  of  hope,  since  they  are  con- 
tinually violated.  But  so  it  is  with  every  other 
law  of  man  and  every  law  that  God  has  made 
for  man;  they  are  continually  violated.  But  they 
are  still  the  highest  law  of  the  land,  the  ideals 
toward  which  the  nation  moves,  the  standards 
of  our  justice,  the  straight-edged  rules  by  which 
just  men  of  the  future  will  measure  the  irregu- 
larities of  our  courts  of  to-day.  There  is  vindi- 
cation for  every  violated  law. 

In  1856  political  leaders  asked  Abraham  Lin- 
coln what  principles  should  underly  the  new  party 


64  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

that  was  to  be  organized.  Lincoln  replied:  "Let 
us  build  our  new  party  on  the  rock  of  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
not  prevail  against  us."  This  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, with  its  lofty  principles  of  equality, 
which  the  political  charlatan  seeks  to  ridicule,  is 
still  the  best  rock  on  which  American  civilization 
can  stand. 

But  there  are  some  who  lay  upon  their  con- 
sciences the  unction  of  expediency,  that  the  Ne- 
gro is  disfranchised  simply  for  the  sake  of  peace 
with  the  lower  and  more  unreasonable  element  of 
whites,  that  this  element  will  like  the  Negro  bet- 
ter if  they  can  rob  him  of  a  good  measure  of  his 
freedom,  and  will  be  kinder  to  him, — in  short, 
that  the  Negro  is  disfranchised  for  his  own  best 
welfare — physical  welfare!  Thus  they  would 
damn  his  soul  in  order  to  save  his  hide,  they 
would  deprive  him  of  the  precious  jewel  of  lib- 
erty in  order  to  grant  him  the  baser  metal  of 
physical  existence, — in  order  to  do  him  a  little 
kindness,  they  will  do  him  the  greatest  wrong  in 
the  world. 

But  there  is  hope  for  the  Negro  because  the 
white  man  is  waking  up  more  and  more  to  the 
fact  that  he  is  "a  part  of  all  that  he  has  met," 
and  that  in  this  country  he  has  met  nearly  a  dozen 
million  Negroes.  Their  fate  is  his  fate,  unless 
the  laws  of  God  and  Nature  are  subject  to  re- 
peal. The  law  of  compensation  is  relentless:  if 
the  virtue  of  the  black  race  is  set  at  naught,  the 
best  citadels  of  the  white  race  are  undermined; 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  65 

if  a  black  man  is  pressed  down  to  the  brute  end 
of  society,  white  men  must  then  be  brutal  enough 
to  pay  his  brutish  acts  with  retaliative  brutality; 
if  a  law  is  made  to  disfranchise  Negroes  in  Geor- 
gia, it  will  disfranchise  a  hundred  thousand 
whites,  and  the  very  class  of  poor  whites  whose 
misguided  votes  made  the  disfranchising  law  pos- 
sible. There  is  hope  for  the  black  man  if  there 
be  any  hope  for  the  white  man. 

There  is  hope  for  the  Negro  in  education.  The 
question  of  capacity  is  a  question  of  the  past; 
the  man  who  does  not  know  it  is  a  quarter-century 
behind.  All  the  poverty  of  opportunity  has  been 
unable  to  defeat  his  almighty  desire  for  educa- 
tion. In  one  locality  in  Alabama  the  Negro  child 
gets  less  than  one  dollar  per  annum  for  his  edu- 
cation, and  the  white  child  gets  eighteen  dollars, 
— so  that  if  attainment  were  proportioned  to  the 
money  (which,  thank  Heaven!  it  is  not),  it  would 
take  a  Negro  180  years  to  get  as  much  learning 
as  the  white  child  gets  in  ten  years.  The  Negro's 
desire  for  education  is  a  tale  that  should  stir 
men's  hearts.  This  desire  persists  even  where 
there  is  the  meanest  opportunity  for  satisfaction. 
This  attitude  in  the  Negro  should  fill  his  friends 
with  hope.  There  is  the  story  of  the  old  gentle- 
man who  always  had  "something  to  thank  God 
for,"  whatever  happened.  He  once  slipped  and 
fell  and  dogs  seized  the  meat  which  he  was  car- 
rying home  for  his  dinner.  A  voice  of  scorn 
called  out:  "What  is  there  to  thank  God  for 
now?"     The  answer  came:     "Well,  my  meat  is 


66  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

gone,  and  my  dinner  is  gone,  but  thank  God,  I 
have  my  APPETITE  left."  When  there  are 
no  means  left,  the  Negro's  desire  and  good  cheer 
and  his  hope  abide,  and  these  no  man  can  de- 
stroy. 

If  there  be  any  truth  in  the  statement  that 
the  education  of  the  Negro  has  brought  evils, 
still  the  reply  is,  that  the  only  remedy  for  the 
evils  of  education  is  MORE  education.  Some 
men  speak  as  if  ignorance  were  the  sum  of  all 
blessings.  If  the  education  of  the  Negro  has  been 
an  evil  to  anybody,  that  body  has  not  been  the 
Negro.  The  elevation  of  a  man  may  be  an  evil 
to  the  man  who  is  trying  to  keep  him  down;  to 
the  man  who  is  trying  to  rise,  every  bit  of  aid 
is  an  undeniable  blessing.  Ignorance  for  the  op- 
pressed is  a  necessary  part  of  the  policy  of  op- 
pression. 

There  is  hope  for  the  Negro  in  religion, — in 
his  own  religion  and  in  the  religion  of  the  people 
among  whom  he  lives.  The  Negro,  for  his  part, 
has  enough  rehglousness  to  save  America.  In 
many  cases  this  religiousness  very  sorely  needs 
to  be  Christianized.  Less  religion  and  more 
Christianity  would  not  hurt  the  Negro — nor  his 
friends. 

The  progress  of  a  race  cannot  be  measured  day 
after  day,  but  must  be  taken  decade  after  decade, 
or  generation  after  generation.  Has  the  Negro 
advanced?  Fifty  years  ago  he  did  not  own  his 
own  body;  now  he  owns  a  billion  dollars  besides. 
Then  he  was  a  man  without  a  countrj",  hardly 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  67 

claiming  a  foot  of  land;  now  he  has  three  hundred 
thousand  farms,  half  a  million  homes  and  half 
a  hundred  banks.  Then  he  was  ignorant;  now 
he  has  thirty  thousand  schools  with  more  than 
thirty  thousand  teachers,  and  half  a  dozen  mil- 
hons  who  can  read.  He  always  had  religion, 
but  now,  In  addition  to  that,  he  has  about  thirty 
thousand  churches  with  millions  of  members  and 
the  Lord  only  knows  how  many  preachers. 

Should  America  be  hopeless  of  a  people  who, 
in  proportion  to  their  numbers  and  opportunities, 
have  done  as  much  for  America  as  any  other  peo- 
ple living?  Who  have  cleared  the  forests  of  the 
South  and  driven  the  dragon  from  her  swamps? 
The  South  sometimes  boasts  of  the  purity  of  its 
Anglo-Saxon  blood.  For  that  It  must  thank  the 
Negro;  for  the  superior  fitness  of  Negro  labor 
kept  out  the  foreigner.  The  Negro  has  been 
the  vaccine  in  the  body  of  the  South  which  has 
impregnated  the  system  against  the  worst  dis- 
eases of  southern  Europe  and  Asia.  But  for  the 
Negro,  Atlanta  would  to-day  be  as  much  of  an 
interracial  hodge  podge  as  Is  Boston  or  New 
York. 

The  black  American  should  advance  faster  in 
the  future  than  In  the  past,  for  nothing  succeeds 
like  success.  But  If  It  should  take  two  years  of 
the  future  to  equal  one  year  of  the  past,  it  would 
not  justify  despair.  In  1837  Lovejoy  was  mur- 
dered in  Illinois  for  a  mild  opinion  against  Ne- 
gro slavery;  in  1863  a  man  of  Illinois  issued  a 
proclamation   freeing  millions   of   Negroes.      In 


68  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

1857  the  highest  court  in  the  land  expressed  an 
opinion  that  the  Negro  had  no  more  respectable 
rights  than  the  beasts  of  the  field;  and  a  little 
more  than  ten  years  later  the  Negro  was  made 
a  citizen  by  the  highest  law  in  the  land.  Fifty 
years  ago  if  a  book  was  found  in  the  hands  of 
a  Negro,  that  hand  might  be  cut  off  with  a  car- 
penter's tool;  while  to-day  he  has  thousands  of 
schools  and  millions  of  students.  There  is  abso- 
lutely no  reason  in  despair. 

When  a  black  slave  woman  saw  Lincoln  at  last 
entering  Richmond  in  1865,  she  exclaimed,  "Well, 
de  Lord  am  slow,  but  He  am  sho," — and  the 
truth  is  as  sound  as  the  grammar  is  poor. 

In  the  last  fifty  years  the  Negro  has  accom- 
plished all  that  he  could  have  been  expected  to 
accomplish  and  more  than  he  actually  was  ex- 
pected to  accomphsh.  Perhaps  no  people  in  all 
history  have  ever  disappointed  so  many  ill  pre- 
dictions as  has  the  American  Negro.  If  the  ter- 
rible prophets  of  forty  years  ago  could  rise  from 
the  dead,  they  ought  to  be  most  agreeably  sur- 
prised. He  has  answered  the  prophecy  of  rever- 
sion to  savagery  by  becoming  at  least  the  most 
rehgious  element  in  the  country.  He  has  an- 
swered the  prophecy  of  ignorance  by  wiping  out 
two-thirds  of  his  illiteracy.  He  has  answered  the 
prophecy  of  public  menace  by  being  peace-loving. 
He  has  answered  the  prophecy  of  extinction  by 
multiplying  his  numbers  by  300  per  cent,  accord- 
ing to  the  count,  and  perhaps  by  another  100  per 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  69 

cent,  who  never  get  counted.  He  stands  to-day 
the  despair  of  the  prophets. 

He  should  be  taught  that  next  to  the  hand  of 
God  his  own  hand  rules  his  destiny.  The  story 
is  told  of  a  white  preacher  who  was  endeavoring 
to  explain  to  a  Negro  candidate  for  the  ministry 
the  doctrine  of  ELECTION, — that  some  men  are 
elected  to  be  saved  while  others  are  elected  to 
be  lost,  by  fore-ordaining  powers  over  which  they 
have  no  control.  The  black  candidate  could  not 
understand  how  a  fellow  could  be  elected  to  a 
position  without  ever  consenting  to  be  nominated, 
until  a  Negro  bystander  volunteered  to  help  the 
white  man  out  by  offering  this  explanation:  "It 
is  just  like  this,"  said  the  Negro,  "God,  He  votin' 
for  you;  and  the  devil,  he  votin'  'gin  you;  so 
whichever  way  you  vote,  that's  the  way  the  'lec- 
tion goes."  In  the  decision  of  a  man's  own 
fate  he  has  the  deciding  vote. 

That  truth  is  not  at  all  inconsistent  with  the 
fact  that  we  are  all,  white  and  black,  subjects  of 
circumstances,  children  of  antecedents  over  which 
we  have  no  control.  The  present  is  the  offspring 
of  the  past.  We  have  been  cast  up  as  a  moun- 
tain is  cast  up  from  the  deep,  and  it  will  take 
time  to  alter  our  relation  to  one  another  and 
to  the  rest  of  the  wold.  Tho  all  is  not  well,  and 
tho  the  changes  of  a  day  are  invisible,  yet  the 
decades  and  the  ages  are  telling  and  will  tell 
the  story  of  our  progress  and  mutual  adjust- 
ment. Race  prejudice  is  simply  the  last  great 
enemy  of  human  brotherhood,  and  in  its  turn  it 


70  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

will  be  destroyed  as  have  all  the  other  enemies. 
It  is  simply  the  last  barrier  behind  which  the  re- 
treating narrowness  of  the  human  heart  has  taken 
refuge.  All  other  bars  to  universal  brotherhood 
have  been  broken  one  by  one :  First,  man  tried 
to  live  to  himself;  every  man's  hand  was  against 
his  neighbor,  and  he  scarcely  trusted  even  the 
female  with  whom  he  associated.  This  isolating 
prejudice  was  finally  broken  down  and  he  ac- 
quired an  Interest  in  certain  other  individuals,  his 
family.  But  it  was  family  against  family  now. 
Intermarriage  brought  families  into  alliances,  and 
retreating  prejudice  took  its  next  stand  behind  the 
clan-family, — and  it  was  clan  against  clan,  and 
finally  tribe  against  tribe.  It  is  now  nation  against 
nation  and  league  against  league.  Will  it  later  be 
race  against  race  and  color  against  color?  The 
hnes  of  civilization  are  surely  drawing  closer 
against  the  grim  and  ancient  caste  of  race  preju- 
dice. And  whether  it  comes  as  a  sequal  to  gigan- 
tic interracial  conflict  or  through  the  long  siege 
of  intellectual,  moral  and  religious  forces,  it 
seems  certain  that  the  overthrow  of  this  last  enemy 
will  mark  the  establishment  of  Universal  Human 
Brotherhood. 


FREDERICK  DOUGLASS 

We  shall  next  speak  of  the  history  of  three  re- 
markable men,  a  Negro,  a  near-Negro  and  a  white 
man.  Frederick  Douglass,  who  was  known  and 
treated  as  a  member  of  the  American  Negro 
group, — ^Alexander  Hamilton  who  was  not  gen- 
erally known  to  be  a  Negro  in  the  American  sense 
of  the  word,  and  was  therefore  not  recognized 
and  treated  as  a  member  of  that  group, — and 
Abraham  Lincoln,  the  American  of  the  Ameri- 
cans, whose  connection  with  the  life  and  history 
of  the  Negro  race  is  like  that  of  a  finger  of  destiny. 

It  is  a  terrible,  almost  incredible  history  which 
we  are  about  to  recite,  but  the  authors  and  actors 
thereof  have  already  appeared  before  the  just 
judgment  of  Heaven, — and  the  living  can  review 
their  virtues  and  their  vices  and  read  the  lesson 
of  their  lives  with  neither  mahce  nor  passion. 

The  life  of  Frederick  Douglass  is  an  epitome 
of  human  life,  which  begins  at  the  very  lowest  and 
ends  at  the  very  highest.  The  life  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  is  typically  American;  the  life  of  Fred- 
erick Douglass  is  typically  human.  Lincoln  began 
in  the  lowest  deprivation  of  American  freedom; 
Douglass  began  in  the  lowest  degradation  of 
human  slavery.    Douglass  was  21  years  old  when 


72  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

he  escaped  from  slavery  to  a  partial  freedom, — 
21  years  old  before  he  reached  the  place  where 
Lincoln  began.  The  life  of  this  black  man,  more 
nearly  than  that  of  any  other  notable  American, 
spans  the  whole  space  of  the  life  of  man. 

Human  slavery  is  pre-eminent  enough  in  its 
badness  to  deserve  a  word  by  itself.  Slavery  is  a 
human  custom,  one  of  the  mores, — Hke  commerce, 
marriage,  agriculture,  labor,  law.  But  unlike 
these  other  mores  it  is  born  not  of  worthy  but  of 
unworthy  sentiments.  The  others  are  born  of  de- 
sires and  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  individual  to 
serve  himself  and  his  fellows,  and  they  develop  a 
fellow-feeling.  Slavery  is  born  of  the  desire  to 
serve  oneself  at  the  expense  of  his  fellows,  and 
begets  ill-feeling.  So  while  slavery  is  like  other 
mores  a  child  of  human  life,  it  is  an  illegitimate 
child,  dishonorably  born;  its  mother  is  laziness 
and  its  father  is  Mammon.  It  is  the  degenerate 
offspring  of  the  desire  to  have,  mated  with  an 
abhorrence  for  work.  Indeed  like  the  half-human 
creatures  of  ancient  myths,  slavery  seems  to  be  the 
unnatural  issue  of  the  man  and  the  brute. 

Some  scholars  claim  that  in  savage  and  un- 
civilized society  slavery  is  normal.  Whether  that 
be  true  or  false,  it  is  abnormal  and  unnatural 
everywhere  in  civilization.  But  any  institution, 
however  wrong,  which  allies  itself  with  human 
greed,  bids  fair  to  outlive  the  day  of  its  normality, 
to  die  hard,  and  to  defy  the  bolts  of  the  reformer. 
Slavery  is  such  an  institution :  it  has  the  powerful 
alliance  of  men's  pockets  and  stomachs,  and  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  73 

passion  of  gain.  As  society  becomes  civilized  and 
conscience  begins  to  open  its  eyes,  men  begin  to 
palliate  and  excuse  their  pet  passions.  The  wish 
will  father  any  kind  of  thought.  The  civilized, 
Christianized  enslaver  accepted  the  doctrine  of 
the  brotherhood  of  man  and  piously  said:  We 
will  elevate  and  bless  our  heathen  brother  by  re- 
ducing him  to  slavery.  This  absurd  contradiction 
for  nearly  two  thousand  years  seduced  the  Chris- 
tian church.  It  is  notorious  that  no  group  ever 
enslaved  another  group  from  the  motive  of  con- 
ferring benefits. 

As  we  have  indicated  in  a  previous  chapter  the 
commerce  in  slavery  began  in  1442  when  Hgnrv 
the  Navigator^  a  Portuguese  prince,  allowed  some 
Moors  to  ransom  their  own  men  by  delivering  ten 
Negroes  instead.  This  taste  of  human  blood  at 
once  excited  the  cupidity  and  avarice  of  the  Span- 
ish race,  which  gradually  infected  better  civiliza- 
tions and  filled  the  earth  with  a  million  horrors. 
What  with  the  seductiveness  and  contagion  of 
avarice,  and  what  with  the  discovery  of  a  New 
World  and  the  development  of  agriculture,  Africa 
became  the  world's  mart  for  the  raw  material  of 
slavery.  The  horrors  of  the  slave  ship  are  mat- 
ters of  cold  record,  written  not  by  the  victims  but 
by  the  perpetrators.  Two  captives  out  of  every 
three  were  either  starved  or  drowned  or  butch- 
ered on  the  high  seas,  before  reaching  a  worse 
fate  In  the  Western  World. 

With  this  virus  British  America  was  inoculated 
In  the  year  of  161 9  at  Jamestown  in  the  colony  of 


74  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Virginia.  Until  thistles  produce  figs  a  system 
rooted  in  such  antecedents  will  be  ugly  in  its  fruit, 
ugly  to  see  and  ugly  to  relate.  In  such  antecedents 
American  slavery  was  rooted.  In  this  institution 
began  the  life  of  Douglass,  which  we  shall  report 
with  fidelity  to  truth, — with  love  of  right  and 
hatred  of  wrong,  but  without  malice. 

In  Feb.,  1817,  as  nearly  as  he  could  determine 
over  half  a  century  afterwards,  Frederick  Doug- 
lass was  born  in  Tuckahoe,  Talbot  County,  Mary- 
land,— a  place  till  this  day  remarkable  for  noth- 
ing save  the  sole  fact  that  Douglass  was  born 
there.  His  mother  was  Harriet  Bailey,  a  slave 
owned  by  Aaron  Anthony.  She  was  black  and  of 
comely  African  hneaments.  Of  his  father  nobody 
knows  anything;  some  have  supposed  that  he  was 
one  of  the  slave  owners  or  overseers, — but  Doug- 
lass was  woolly-haired  and  rather  dark  for  a 
mulatto.  Until  seven  years  of  age  he  lived  hap- 
pily in  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  he  was  a  slave 
with  his  own  grandmother,  Betsy  Bailey,  who  was 
the  caretaker  of  all  the  slave  babies  of  Capt. 
Anthony  until  they  should  be  ready  for  the  field  or 
the  market. 

Between  seven  and  eight  years  of  age  he  was 
carried  by  his  grandmother,  with  a  crowd  of  other 
youngsters  who  had  reached  a  useful  or  a  market- 
able age,  to  his  master,  who  was  general  superin- 
tendent of  the  plantations  of  Col.  Lloyd,  a 
wealthy  Marylander,  owning  a  thousand  slaves 
and  many  farms.  The  home  of  Col.  Lloyd, 
known  among  the  slaves  as  "The  Great  House," 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  75 

with  its  imposing  wealth  and  antebellum  munifi- 
cence, made  a  profound  impression  upon  the  mind 
of  the  child. 

Here  he  had  his  first  taste  of  the  bitterness  of 
slavery,  and  as  an  onlooker  beheld  some  of  the 
horrors  to  which  his  birth  would  make  him  heir. 
In  the  first  place  he  was  put  under  the  stern  and 
cruel  governance  of  "Aunt  Katy,"  a  slave 
woman  who  seemed  to  be  a  sort  of  superintendent 
of  the  youthful  slave  property  of  Capt.  Anthony. 
He  seldom  saw  his  mother,  for  in  order  to  have 
a  moment  with  him  she  had  to  walk  twelve  miles 
from  another  plantation  at  night  and  be  back  for 
work  in  the  morning.  Through  all  his  life  he 
remembered  with  profoundest  gratitude  how  upon 
one  such  mission  she  came  just  in  the  nick  of  time 
to  save  him  from  actual  starvation  at  the  hands  of 
merciless  "Aunt  Katy."  Lucretia,  his  master's 
daughter,  and  little  Daniel,  the  youngest  son  of 
Col.  Lloyd,  were  his  "friends  at  court,"  and  often 
befriended  him  against  the  tyranny  of  "Aunt 
Katy"  by  buttered  biscuits  and  other  food,  or  by 
the  still  more  kindly  ministrations  of  humane  and 
sympathetic  words.  His  mother's  nocturnal  visits 
suddenly  ceased  altogether:  she  had  either  died 
or,  still  worse,  been  sold  to  the  "far  South." 
Somehow  she  had  learned  to  read  and  it  was  a 
risk  to  keep  such  a  slave  too  near  to  the  borders 
of  the  free  states. — And  alas!  for  the  horrors 
which  his  waking  mind  was  permitted  to  see 
through  his  natural  eyes;  he  saw  slave  girls 
beaten   and   mangled   by   the    overseers   without 


76  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

remonstrance  from  their  owners;  he  saw  the  un- 
defined and  indefinable  crime  of  "impudence" 
punished  like  murder;  he  saw  young  Denby  shot 
down  in  cold  blood  for  running  from  the  lash; 
through  a  crack  in  the  wall  of  the  little  cell  where 
he  slept  on  the  ground  without  covering,  he 
peeped  early  one  frosty  morning  into  a  neighbor- 
ing room  and  saw  .his  Aunt  Esther,  a  beautiful 
slave  girl,  tied  up  by  her  hands  and  on  tiptoe, 
while  a  human  demon  stood  by  and  coolly  draw- 
ing his  rawhide  through  his  hand,  as  if  delighted 
with  its  delicious  feel,  dealt  blow  after  blow  until 
her  bare  back  was  like  fresh  bloody  beef, — and 
for  an  unnameable  reason  entirely  to  the  credit  of 
the  girl.  Sometimes  he  saw  the  slave  resist  and 
fight  the  overseer, — and  although  a  resisting  slave 
was  sure  to  be  overpowered,  tied  and  whipped 
finally,  as  a  matter  of  policy,  his  youthful  mind 
was  quick  to  seize  the  fact  that  those  who  resisted 
most  sternly  were  seldom  attacked.  A  fight  with 
such  a  slave  was  neither  pleasant  nor  safe,  and 
the  overseer  would  diplomatically  avoid  an  en- 
counter. This  observation  caused  young  Fred  to 
make  a  formula  which  he  carried  and  repeated 
through  his  whole  life :  That  those  are  whipped 
oftenest  who  are  whipped  easiest. 

A  working  slave's  weekly  allowance  of  food 
was  two  pounds  of  pickled  pork,  one  peck  of  meal 
and  one  handful  of  salt, — and  his  clothing  was  of 
the  same  scantiness.  But  the  most  neglected  little 
animals  of  any  slave  plantation  were  the  slave 
children  not  yet  large  enough  to  work.     Little 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  77 

pigs  could  soon  be  killed  for  meat,  and  so  they 
were  fed;  little  calves  could  be  slaughtered  for 
veal,  and  so  they  were  fattened;  but  little  "nig- 
gers" could  do  nothing  but  consume  what  they 
could  not  earn,  and  so  they  were  stinted.  Until 
ten  years  of  age  they  were  allowed  neither  hat  or 
shoes,  coat  nor  trousers, — only  one  tow-linen 
shirt  per  annum,  and  if  that  wore  out  before  the 
end  of  the  year  they  could  wear  their  skins  for 
the  remaining  months.  They  had  no  beds  but  the 
floor  or  ground  of  their  huts.  Fred  found  him  an 
empty  feed  sack  and  used  to  crawl  into  it,  and 
slept  head  in  and  heels  out.  No  wonder  that  he 
said  when  reflecting  on  this  childhood  that  "the 
pigs  in  the  pen  had  leaves,  and  the  horses  in  the 
stable  had  straw,  but  the  children  had  no  beds." 
Their  food  was  coarse  meal  boiled  into  a  mush 
and  poured  into  a  common  trough, — and  like  little 
piggies  they  were  called  and  like  little  piggies  they 
came,  with  neither  spoons  nor  forks,  but  some 
with  oyster-shells,  and  some  with  chips  or  pieces 
of  shingle  or  potsherds  from  the  yard, — and  the 
strong  and  more  muscular  would  get  most  and  the 
weak  and  most  needy  would  get  least.  Fred  could 
have  fought  his  way  but  the  vindictive  hate  of 
"Aunt  Katy"  would  punish  him  if  he  pushed  the 
others.  So  that  even  in  childhood,  which  is  prover- 
bially happy,  he  says  he  was  led  to  wish  that  he 
had  never  been  born. 

"Why  am  I  a  slave?"  was  a  question  that  puz- 
zled his  boyish  brain. 

So  the  "great  house"  of  the  slave  plantation. 


78  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

with  all  its  splendor,  had  an  underworld,  an  anti- 
podal condition,  within  a  stone's  throw.  Like  the 
ancient  conception  of  the  future  life  it  had  the 
abodes  of  the  blest  and  the  damned  in  close  prox- 
imity. The  opulence  and  plenty  of  the  mansion 
were  balanced  by  the  poverty  and  squalor  of  the 
cabin.  But  the  slave  servants  in  the  "great  house" 
itself  were  more  fortunate ;  that  is,  they  were  bet- 
ter fed  and  dressed,  fat  and  sleek.  And  a  visitor 
from  the  outside  world,  from  free  states  or  from 
Europe,  might  be  shown  the  mansion  but  not  the 
slave  quarters;  and  seeing  the  well-kept,  liveried 
waiters  standing  behind  the  chairs  in  the  dining- 
room,  he  might  wonder  why  it  is  that  Lovejoy  and 
Garrison  and  Phillips  lose  their  lives  or  get  them- 
selves into  so  much  trouble  over  a  people  who  are 
being  treated  so  kindly. 

Miss  Lucretia,  the  kindly  daughter  of  his 
owner,  was  to  marry  Thomas  Auld,  and  Fred 
was  to  be  sent  to  Thomas'  brother,  Hugh  Auld, 
in  Baltimore  to  take  care  of  the  little  nephew 
Tommy  Auld.  Boys  usually  regret  to  leave  their 
homes  and  early  mates,  but  little  Fred  received 
the  news  from  Miss  Lucretia  that  he  was  to  be 
transported  out  of  this  den  of  horrors  with  un- 
bounded joy.  His  tow-linen  shirt  was  to  be  ex- 
changed for  real  trousers;  he  had  three  days  to 
prepare  for  the  journey,  and  he  spent  most  of 
the  time  bathing  in  the  creek  and  scraping  the 
dead  skin  from  his  knees  and  the  soles  of  his  feet. 
When  he  reached  his  Baltimore  home  Mrs. 
Sophia  Auld,  the  wife  and  mother,  said  to  her 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  79 

little   son:   "Tommy,   here's  your   Freddy," — as 
one  might  speak  of  a  new  poodle. 

But  Mrs.  Auld  was  at  heart  a  kind  and  gentle 
lady,  who  had  never  been  a  slaveholder,  who  did 
not  know  the  philosophy  of  slavery,  and  who 
made  the  egregious  blunder,  from  the  slavehold- 
ing  standpoint,  of  teaching  "Freddy"  to  read. 
And  one  of  the  greatest  indictments  against  slav- 
ery is  illustrated  by  the  change  which  the  poison 
of  irresponsible  power  wrought  in  this  noble 
woman's  character.  Her  disposition  gradually 
changed  from  sweet  to  bitter,  from  gentle  to  vin- 
dictive. One  day,  while  her  soul  was  still  white 
and  unscarred,  she  innocently  boasted  to  her  hus- 
band how  quickly  and  well  Fred  had  learned  to 
read  the  Bible, — but  Master  Hugh  was  better  in- 
structed in  the  creed  of  slavery,  and  immediately 
he  forbade  it,  and  thundered  his  disapproval  in 
these  words:  that  "if  you  give  a  nigger  an  inch 
he  will  take  an  ell.  Learning  will  spoil  the  best 
nigger  in  the  world.  If  he  learns  to  read  the 
Bible  it  will  forever  unfit  him  to  be  a  slave."  No 
wonder  that  Douglass  contended  in  all  his  after 
life  that  this  was  the  first  and  one  of  the  best 
anti-slavery  speeches  he  had  ever  heard.  He 
caught  the  cue  at  once:  learning  is  inconsistent 
with  being  in  slavery.  All  right.  He  had  already 
seen  enough  of  slavery  to  give  his  vote  against 
that,  and  if  learning  was  the  key  to  the  way  out, 
he  was  going  to  find  the  key.  Master  Hugh's 
objection  was  as  great  a  stimulus  as  Mrs.  Sophia's 
instruction. 


8o  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Poor  Mrs.  Auld  now  sought  to  undo  what  she 
had  done.  She  was  more  vindictive  than  her  hus- 
band: she  tore  papers  from  Fred's  hand,  she 
peeped  through  keyholes  and  cracks,  she  eaves- 
dropped at  his  door.  Too  late;  she  had  given 
him  the  "inch"  and  he  took  the  "ell."  Persecu- 
tion stimulated  him.  Crayon  was  his  pen,  and  a 
barrel  head  or  the  pavement  of  the  street  was  his 
desk.  This  contradiction  in  her  noble  soul  made 
the  woman  lose  her  sweet  disposition  and  become 
vixenish  and  shrewish  even  to  her  own  family. 
An  anthropologist  says  that  no  man  was  ever 
known  to  be  great  and  good  enough  to  be  a  slave- 
holder. 

Capt.  Anthony  died,  and  Fred  had  to  go  back 
to  the  farm  where  he  and  the  other  slaves  and  the 
horses  and  sheep  and  cattle  and  plows  must  be 
"valued  and  divided"  among  the  heirs.  Being 
"valued  and  divided"  he  fell  to  Miss  Lucretia, 
and  to  his  great  joy  and  greater  fortune  she  loaned 
him  again  to  the  Aulds  in  Baltimore. 

Lucretia  died,  leaving  him  the  property  of  her 
husband,  Thomas  Auld,  and  he  was  brought  from 
Baltimore  to  Thomas'  plantation  near  St.  Mich- 
ael's, Talbot  County,  Maryland.  Thomas  mar- 
ried a  new  wife,  who  "knew  not  Joseph,"  who 
was  hateful  and  stingy,  and  she  starved  Fred  and 
the  other  slaves  almost  to  death.  She  had  a  horse 
from  her  father's  place,  which  when  he  got  loose 
would  run  back  to  her  father's  house.  Fred 
would  let  him  loose  to  get  to  go  after  him.  Beast 
and  man  had  the  same  object  in  going:  the  horse 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  8i 

found  fodder  and  Fred  found  bread.  A  cook  was 
there  who  was  generous  to  the  hungry. 

The  boy  was  not  an  ideal  slave ;  he  hated  slav- 
ery; he  was  rebellious.  He  exasperated  Thomas 
Auld,  who  was  one  of  the  worst  types  of  slave- 
holding  character, — selfish,  cruel,  stingy.  Finally 
the  slaveholders  had  a  great  Methodist  camp- 
meeting  and  Master  Thomas  professed  religion. 
The  slaves  secretly  rejoiced  at  this  conversion, 
hoping  for  more  bread  and  less  beating  from  the 
hand  of  a  Christian  master, — to  their  great  dis- 
appointment. The  only  difference  was  that  now 
when  "brother"  Thomas  Auld,  class  leader  of  his 
church,  got  ready  to  whip  a  slave,  he  would  quote 
the  passage  of  scripture  which  says:  "That  serv- 
ant which  knew  his  lord's  will  and  prepared  not 
himself,  neither  did  according  to  his  will,  shall 
be  beaten  with  many  stripes."  The  sternness  and 
gravity  of  religion  were  added  to  his  meanness. 
Fred  was  fifteen  years  old  and  had  professed  re- 
ligion himself,  but  he  doubted  the  genuineness  of 
Thomas  Auld's  conversion. 

Finally  Thomas  decided  that  Fred  needed 
"breaking."  You  have  heard  of  "broncho- 
busters"  and  "ox-breakers."  Well,  Thomas  had 
a  neighbor  known  as  a  "Negro-breaker."  This 
Edward  Covey  was  a  pious  man;  his  religion  kept 
him  from  breaking  any  rule  of  the  Sabbath,  but 
not  from  breaking  any  bone  of  a  slave's  body  on 
any  other  day  of  the  week.  Fred's  treatment 
by  this  man  in  the  year  of  1834  is  too  harrowing, 
bloody  and  inhuman  to  relate  in  detail.     In  the 


82  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

first  six  months  he  was  several  times  nearly  killed 
by  untamed  oxen  which  he  was  compelled  to  drive, 
or  by  Covey's  lash  and  bludgeon,  until  one  morn- 
ing in  despair  he  made  up  his  mind  that,  live  or 
die,  he  was  going  to  resist.  After  Covey  had 
fought  him  for  hours  without  being  able  to  sub- 
due or  whip  him,  he  turned  Fred  loose  and  said 
diplomatically:  "Now,  you  scoundrel,  go  to  your 
work;  I  would  not  have  whipped  you  half  so  hard 
if  you  had  not  resisted."  This  physical  fight,  this 
resistance,  this  refusal  to  be  whipped,  reawakened 
Fred's  intellectual  and  moral  manhood  and  was 
one  of  the  crises  of  his  life.  He  never  received 
another  whipping  in  slavery. 

"Those  are  whipped  oftenest  who  are  whipped 
easiest." 

Slavery  would  be  bad  enough  if  the  slave  could 
be  treated  as  well  as  the  horse,  the  cow  and  the 
dog.  But  no  system  of  slavery  can  ever  treat 
its  average  slave  as  well  as  the  horse  and  cow  and 
dog.  Slavery  itself  is  such  a  revolt  against  human 
nature  that  the  slave's  very  humanity,  instead  of 
protecting  him,  damns  him.  For  instance:  if  the 
horse  balks,  he  is  an  unreasoning  brute — pat  him 
and  coax  him;  if  the  slave  balks,  he  is  a  malicious 
devil — kill  him.  If  a  horse  breaks  a  wagon,  it  is 
an  accident;  if  a  slave  breaks  a  tool,  it  is  sullen 
revenge — beat  him.  If  the  horse  is  sick,  he  is 
sick;  if  a  slave  is  sick,  he  is  trying  to  get  out  of 
work.  If  the  horse  is  slow,  he  is  a  slow  horse; 
if  a  slave  is  slow,  he  is  stubborn.  If  the  horse 
injures  his  owner,  it  is  regrettable;  if  a  slave  in- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  83 

jures  his  owner,  it  is  murder.  And  the  most 
blinding  and  dangerous  thing  of  all  is  this  thought 
in  the  mind  of  the  slaveholder:  If  I  were  in  that 
fellow's  place  and  he  in  mine,  I  would  do  every 
sly,  mean  thing  I  could  do  to  him,  and  I  know  he 
does  the  same.  Thus  a  man  always  develops 
hatred  for  the  one  whom  he  habitually  wrongs. 
The  slave's  very  humanhood  damns  him  below  the 
dumb  unreasoning  beast;  and  as  to  slaveholder, 
there  is  no  position  within  the  gift  of  the  devil 
better  fitted  to  destroy  the  character  of  the  one 
who  fills  it. 

The  next  year  our  17-year-old  lad  was  rented 
out  to  William  Freeland,  who  was  not  a  church 
member,  but  as  compared  with  the  brutality  of 
Covey  he  was  a  kind  and  gentle  master.  You 
might  think  that  the  slave  would  be  contented  with 
kind  treatment  after  being  treated  so  inhumanly. 
But  such  is  not  human  nature.  The  "inch"  and 
the  "ell"  philosophy  is  literally  true  in  the  matter 
of  liberty.  Give  a  slave  a  cruel  master  and  he 
will  wish  a  kinder  master;  give  him  a  kind  master 
and  he  will  want  no  master  at  all.  The  half  free 
aspires  to  full  freedom.  Give  him  an  inch  and 
he  demands  an  ell.  Such  is  human  nature.  And 
human  nature  is  right:  kindness  or  cruelty  is  not 
the  essential  question;  it  is  slavery  or  freedom. 
To  make  a  man  a  slave  and  then  treat  him  kindly 
is  to  put  a  chain  on  him  and  paint  it  with  gold 
paint.  To  be  chained  with  a  chain  is  to  be  chained, 
whether  the  chain  be  gold  or  iron. 

So,  what  did  Fred  do  under  the  experience  of 


84  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

better  slave  treatment?  Thank  God  and  be  con- 
tented? The  first,  but  not  the  last.  He  planned 
to  run  away  from  all  slavery,  kind  and  cruel, 
"good"  or  worse.  He  began  to  teach  John  and 
Henry  Harris  how  to  read  to  inspire  them  with 
the  feeling  of  liberty.  Thus  organizing  a  band 
of  five  he  wrote  passes  for  each  and  set  a  day  for 
flight.  They  were  betrayed,  arrested  and  put 
into  jail  on  the  horrible  charge  of  an  attempt  to 
steal  themselves.  But  the  brave  little  fraternity 
stood  together,  ate  their  passes  with  their  bread 
and  gave  not  a  word  of  incriminating  evidence 
one  against  the  other.  They  narrowly  escaped 
being  sold  into  Georgia  or  Louisiana  or  Alabama, 
a  fate  worse  than  hanging;  they  were  released 
from  jail  and  Fred  was  sent  back  to  Hugh  Auld's 
in  Baltimore. 

Here  he  learned  ship-calking,  and  at  One  time 
was  nearly  beaten  to  death  by  the  white  appren- 
tices, who  thus  showed  their  resentment  at  work- 
ing with  a  "nigger," — a  spirit  which  organized 
labor  still  holds.  Master  Hugh  took  all  his  earn- 
ings, allowing  him  poor  clothes  and  poorer  food. 
He  hired  the  boy  out  as  helper  to  the  carpenters 
in  a  shipyard, — not  to  one  carpenter  but  to  the 
seventy-five.  All  had  an  equal  claim  to  his  time 
and  obedience.  He  had  seventy-five  masters, 
when,  as  he  suggests,  one  was  bad  enough.  He 
was  to  answer  the  beck  and  call  of  each  one,  even 
if  they  all  beckoned  and  called  at  the  same  time. 
He  tells  how,  as  a  bewildered  boy,  he  received 
impossible   and   simultaneous   orders   from  these 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  85 

hard  men:  "Fred,  come  help  me  to  cant  this  tim- 
ber here," — "Fred,  come  carry  this  timber  yon- 
der,"— "Fred,  bring  that  roller  here," — "Fred, 
go  get  a  fresh  can  of  water," — "Fred,  come  help 
saw  off  the  end  of  this  timber," — "Fred,  go  quick 
and  get  the  crowbar," — "Fred,  hold  on  the  end 
of  this  fall," — "Fred,  go  to  the  blacksmith's  shop 
and  get  a  new  punch," — "Halloo,  Fred!  run  and 
bring  me  a  cold-chisel," — "I  say,  Fred,  bear  a 
hand,  and  get  up  a  fire  under  the  steam-box  as 
quick  as  lightning," — "Hullo,  nigger!  come  turn 
this  grindstone," — "Come,  come;  move,  move! 
and  bowse  this  timber  forward," — "I  say,  darkey, 
blast  your  eyes !  why  don't  you  heat  up  some 
pitch?" — "Halloo!  halloo!  halloo!  (three  voices 
at  the  same  time) — "Come  here;  go  there; 
hold  on  where  you  are.  D — n  you.  If  you  move 
I'll  knock  your  brains  out!" 

"Why  am  I  a  slave?"  mused  he.  "Why  can 
I  not  claim  the  fruits  of  my  own  labor?"  Finally 
he  was  permitted  to  rent  himself  at  the  hard  bar- 
gain of  $3  per  week  and  to  pay  for  all  his  living 
besides.  But  this  taste  of  liberty  and  possession 
determined  him  to  try  again  for  freedom,  and 
he  fixed  his  date  for  flight  on  September  3,  1838. 

A  second  failure  would  be  fatal.  Moreover  It 
required  unusual  courage  for  any  slave  to  run 
away.  Illiterate  slaves  knew  no  more  of  geog- 
raphy or  distance  than  an  Infant  child,  and  the 
very  names  of  the  free  states  were  kept  from 
them.  Any  white  person  could  halt.  Interrogate 
and  arrest  any  colored  person  on  any  road.     A 


86  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

gang  of  ruffians  might  sometimes  catch  a  free  col- 
ored person,  destroy  his  free  papers  and  sell  him 
into  slavery.  There  were  professional  kidnappers 
who  caught  runaways;  and  sometimes  cunningly 
inducing  a  slave  to  run  away,  they  would  overtake 
him  and  get  the  reward  for  catching  him.  These 
fellows  literally  infested  the  borderline  between 
the  slave  and  the  free  states,  hke  human  carrion 
crows  circling  about  the  rotten  carcass  of  slavery. 
Besides,  running  away  was  like  going  into  a  living 
death, — burying  oneself  forever  from  friends  and 
relatives, — walking  into  a  tomb  with  eyes  open 
and  consciousness  unimpaired.  The  slave  who 
could  run  away  was  a  hero,  and  to  such  heroes 
the  other  slaves  owe  their  freedom.  These  brave 
men  indicted  slavery  wherever  they  went.  In  the 
free  states  and  in  Canada  they  did  slavery  no 
good  by  their  reports.  The  fugitive  slave  was 
the  creator  of  the  abolitionist.  He  made  "Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin"  and  Garrison  and  Phillips;  and 
those  in  turn  made  political  parties  and  Abraham 
Lincoln.  Sometimes  fugitives  fought  with  in- 
credible heroism  when  overtaken.  These  exiles, 
perhaps  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  strong, 
with  bleeding  backs,  tortured  limbs  and  eloquent 
tongues,  were  every  one  ambassadors  against  the 
Slave  Power. 

One  of  the  very  means  which  the  law  created  to 
protect  slavery  helped  to  destroy  it,  namely,  the 
"free  papers"  which  free  Negroes  had  to  carry. 
Slaves  often  borrowed  these  from  their  free 
brethren,  escaped  to  Canada  and  sent  them  back 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  87 

by  mail.  Frederick  borrowed  a  Negro  sailor's 
"protection"  papers,  boarded  a  train  as  it  was 
pulling  out  of  Baltimore,  to  avoid  being  ques- 
tioned and  measured  by  the  ticket  agent;  and 
being  dressed  like  a  sailor  and  using  a  sailor's 
slang,  he  outwitted  the  conductor  and  within 
twenty-four  hours  found  himself  in  the  city  of 
New  York.  He  was  not  beyond  the  reach  of  fugi- 
tive slave  laws,  and  was  somewhat  dazed  by  the 
success  of  this  bold  attempt.  But  an  escaped 
slave  cannot  live  on  joy,  so  David  Ruggles,  a 
Negro  anti-slavery  worker  in  New  York,  advised 
him  to  go  to  New  Bedford,  Mass.,  where  ship- 
calking  was  in  demand.  Even  slaves  love :  the 
free  colored  girl  in  Baltimore  received  a  secret 
message,  came  on  to  New  York,  and  they  were 
married;  Frederick  paid  the  minister  with 
"thanks." 

From  New  York  to  Newport  they  passed  the 
night  on  the  deck  of  the  steamer,  not  being  al- 
lowed in  the  cabin.  From  Newport  to  New  Bed- 
ford they  went  by  stage,  and  the  driver  held  their 
baggage  for  stage-fare.  This  was  at  once  fur- 
nished by  a  New  Bedford  Negro,  Nathan  John- 
son. In  these  early  struggles  for  freedom  the 
Negroes  stood  by  each  other  nobly.  Nathan 
Johnson  had  just  read  Scott's  "Lady  of  the  Lake," 
so  he  induced  Frederick  to  name  himself  Doug- 
lass. Fred  had  come  under  the  false  name  of 
"Johnson,"  and  Nathan  Johnson  perhaps  thought 
that  there  were  enough  black  "Johnsons"  in  New 
Bedford.     And  the  name  which  Fred's  mother 


88  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

had  given  him  in  slavery  was  FREDERICK 
AUGUSTUS  WASHINGTON  BAILEY.  Irony 
of  ironies!  The  greatest  Prussian,  the  greatest 
Roman,  and  the  greatest  American  in  a  black  slave 
baby. 

The  people  of  New  Bedford  would  have  died 
rather  than  allow  a  slave  hunter  to  return  a  man 
from  their  town  to  slavery;  but  they  would  not 
give  Douglass  a  fair  chance  to  earn  a  living  at  his 
trade.  So  he  did  odd  jobs  of  all  sorts.  The 
sweetness  of  possessing  himself  and  the  fruits  of 
his  toil  inspired  him  to  any  honest  work.  Mean- 
while he  read  the  "Liberator,"  heard  anti-slavery 
discussions,  and  was  schooled  in  Garrisonian  prin- 
ciples. He  was  much  interested  by  the  wealth  and 
industry  of  New  Bedford,  and  learned  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life  that  white  people  could  be 
rich  without  owning  black  people.  In  Tuckahoe, 
Talbot  County,  Maryland,  those  who  did  not  own 
Negroes  were  "po'  white  trash." 

In  1 841  Mr.  Garrison  called  an  anti-slavery 
convention  at  Nantucket.  Douglass  attended  as 
a  spectator,  was  urged  to  speak,  and  was  at  once 
employed  as  agent  of  the  Massachusetts  Anti- 
Slavery  Society, — just  three  years  out  of  slavery. 
Consequently  he  was  often  introduced  to  audi- 
ences as  "a  recent  graduate  from  the  institution 
of  slavery  with  his  diploma  written  on  his  back." 

Frequently  at  the  risk  of  his  life  he  now  fought 
slavery  like  one  who  knew  the  monster,  and  where 
to  hit  and  how  hard.  Dauntless  in  courage,  un- 
bending in  principle  and  terrible  in  logic,  he  be- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  89 

came  one  of  the  most  inveterate  and  uncompro- 
mising foes  to  oppression  that  mankind  has  pro- 
duced. If  halls  and  churches  were  not  open  to 
him,  he  rang  a  bell  through  the  streets,  summoned 
an  audience  and  spoke  under  the  roof  of  high 
heaven.  In  Syracuse  he  talked  all  day,  and  his 
open-air  audience  grew  from  five  in  the  morning 
to  five  hundred  in  the  afternoon.  He  encountered 
foul  eggs,  fouler  words,  and  at  one  time  was 
beaten  into  unconsciousness  by  an  Indiana  mob. 
The  Northern  states  were  at  that  time  disposed 
toward  the  Negro  about  as  Georgia  and  Mis- 
sissippi are  now, — continually  seeking  to  "jim- 
crow,"  disfranchise  and  dishonor  him.  But  wher- 
ever the  fight  was  thickest,  Douglass  was  there. 
He  helped  to  defeat  the  disfranchising  "Dorr 
Constitution"  in  Rhode  Island,  and  in  Massachu- 
setts he  made  so  much  trouble  by  refusing  to  be 
"jim-crowed"  that  the  Eastern  Railroad  ran  its 
passenger  trains  through  Lynn  without  stopping, 
because  Douglass  lived  there.  When  the  church 
people  protested,  the  president  of  the  road  handed 
them  a  rejoinder  like  this:  Well,  the  railroads  are 
no  better  than  the  churches,  and  the  churches  liave 
their  "Negro  pew."  That  was  a  good  argiiment 
against  the  churches,  but  a  poor  one  against  justice 
to  Douglass. 

Douglass's  color  brought  him  the  usual  queer 
experiences  of  the  Negro,  some  of  the  hardest  and 
heaviest  of  which  he  softened  and  lightened  with 
a  joke,  as  is  characteristic  of  his  race.  Once  he 
was  on  a  train  in  the  North.     It  was  crowded, 


90  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

many  were  standing  but  Douglass  had  a  seat  and 
no  one  would  occupy  the  seat  beside  him.  As  the 
night  grew  on  he  took  advantage  of  this  vacant 
seat,  pulled  his  hat  over  his  face  and  lay  down 
to  sleep.  He  had  begun  to  feel  the  real  fun  of 
the  thing,  but  just  as  he  was  enjoying  all  the 
luxury  of  being  black,  a  well-dressed  white  man 
got  on  at  a  station  and  came  and  tapped  him  on 
the  shoulder  and  wanted  to  sit  down  by  him.  With 
a  sleepy  yawn  and  the  merriest  deviltry  in  his 
voice,  Douglass  said  aloud,  so  that  his  white  fel- 
low-passengers could  hear:  "Don't  sit  down  here, 
my  friend,  I'm  a  Nigger!"  There  was  great 
laughter,  and  the  newcomer  sat  down  beside  him. 
Once  he  and  several  other  colored  men  who  were 
speakers  in  the  anti-slavery  cause,  arrived  at 
Janesville,  Wis.,  and  at  the  hotel  they  were,  of 
course,  segregated  at  a  table  in  one  corner  of  the 
dining-room.  This  attracted  to  them  quite  a  deal 
of  annoying  attention.  Every  eye  in  the  dining- 
room  was  directed  toward  them  as  toward  a  group 
of  most  curious  animals.  Even  the  doorway  and 
the  windows  got  piled  full  of  curious  faces  who 
stopped  as  they  passed  along  the  street.  When 
this  curiosity  was  at  its  height  Douglass  said  in 
a  full  loud  voice  to  one  of  the  other  colored  inen: 
"I  have  just  made  a  great  discovery!"  "What 
is  it?"  asked  the  other.  "Why  I  have  just  been 
out  to  the  hotel  stables,  where  I  saw  white  horses 
and  black  horses  eating  out  of  the  same  trough  in 
peace!  From  which  I  infer  that  the  horses  of 
Janesville   are   more   civilized  than   its  people!" 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  91 

This  raised  such  a  storm  of  laughter  at  the  man- 
agement's expense  that  the  colored  men  were  no 
longer  segregated  in  the  dining-room. 

The  ex-slaves  and  their  children  have  never  yet 
realized  how  much  they  owe  their  early  freedom 
to  this  one  black  fugitive.  His  example  was  an 
unanswerable  argument.  His  very  power  and 
presence  made  converts.  Men  reasoned  like  this: 
If  slavery  is  keeping  such  men  as  Frederick  Doug- 
lass in  chains,  it  is  the  devil's  own  institution;  and 
since  he  is,  there  must  be  others. 

Indeed  such  an  impression  was  made  by  this 
"runaway  nigger,"  as  pro-slavery  papers  called 
him,  that  men  began  to  doubt  whether  he  had  ever 
been  a  slave.  To  set  the  question  at  rest  he  pub- 
lished a  pamphlet,  "Frederick  Douglass's  Narra- 
tive," giving  the  details  of  his  bondage  and  the 
name  and  address  of  his  owner.  This  subjected 
him  hourly  to  the  danger  of  being  kidnapped  and 
returned, — for  oh,  how  Thomas  Auld  and  Tucka- 
hoe,  Talbot  County,  Maryland,  would  have  liked 
to  get  hands  on  him  then !  So  he  sailed  for  Eng- 
land. He  was  not  allowed  in  the  cabin  and  had  to 
go  in  steerage.  The  passengers  learned  who  he 
was  and  invited  him  to  make  a  speech;  some 
young  fellows  from  New  Orleans  and  Georgia 
threatened  to  throw  him  into  the  ocean  for  speak- 
ing, and  the  captain  threatened  to  put  them  into 
irons.  When  they  reached  England,  these  inju- 
dicious young  men  flew  to  the  British  press  with 
their  grievances  against  the  captain  and  this 
Negro,  the  British  people  sided  with  the  captain, 


92  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

and  the  incident  served  only  to  furnish  Douglass 
with  the  best  possible  introduction  to  the  British 
public. 

The  English  were  pioneers  in  emancipation, 
and  had  become  constant  and  consistent  friends 
of  the  slave.  Canada  had  steadfastly  refused  to 
enter  into  any  extradition  treaty  to  return  fugi- 
tives from  bondage,  and  the  English  courts  had 
held  that  when  a  slave  set  foot  on  English  soil 
and  breathed  English  air,  he  became  ipso  facto 
ivtt. 

While  abroad  Douglass  did  American  slavery 
all  the  damage  he  possibly  could, — in  England, 
Wales,  Ireland  and  Scotland.  He  heard  the 
foremost  orators,  met  the  pioneer  workers  for 
freedom,  and  enjoyed  the  society  of  the  greatest 
men  of  the  time,  having  the  same  experiences 
which  the  American  Negro  still  has — to  be 
treated  better  in  any  other  civilized  country  of 
the  world  than  in  his  own. 

Yet  he  wanted  to  return;  he  could  not  enjoy 
English  freedom  for  the  haunting  visions  and 
clanking  chains  of  his  fellow  bondsmen  in 
America.  Two  English  ladies,  therefore,  started 
a  movement  to  raise  the  blood-money,  seven  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars,  to  buy  him  from  Thomas 
and  Hugh  Auld  in  Maryland  and  make  him  a 
present  of  himself  to  himself. 

Here  are  copies  of  the  deeds  and  the  manu- 
mission papers  by  which  Douglass  and  his  race 
came  into  possession  of  his  body,  his  soul  and  his 
history: 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  93 

"Know  all  men  by  these  presents:  That  I, 
Thomas  Auld  of  Talbot  County  and  state  of 
Maryland,  for  and  in  consideration  of  the  sum 
of  one  hundred  dollars,  current  money,  to  me 
paid  by  Hugh  Auld,  of  the  city  of  Baltimore,  in 
the  said  state,  at  and  before  the  sealing  and  de- 
livery of  these  presents,  the  receipt  whereof,  I 
the  said  Thomas  Auld,  do  hereby  acknowledge, 
have  granted,  bargained,  and  sold,  and  by  these 
presents  do  grant,  bargain  and  sell  unto  the  said 
Hugh  Auld,  his  executors,  administrators,  and  as- 
signs, ONE  NEGRO  MAN,  by  the  name  of 
FREDERICK  BAILEY— or  DOUGLASS  as  he 
calls  himself — he  is  now  about  twenty-eight  years 
of  age — to  have  and  to  hold  the  said  Negro  man 
for  life.  And  I  the  said  Thomas  Auld,  for  my- 
self, my  heirs,  executors,  and  administrators,  all 
and  singular,  the  said  FREDERICK  BAILEY 
alias  DOUGLASS  unto  the  said  Hugo  Auld,  his 
executors  and  administrators,  and  against  all  and 
every  other  person  or  persons  whatsoever,  shall 
and  will  warrant  and  forever  defend  by  these 
presents.  In  witness  whereof,  I  set  my  hand  and 
seal,  this  thirteenth  day  of  November,  eighteen 
hundred  and  forty-six  (1846). 

THOMAS  AULD. 
"Signed,    sealed,    and   delivered,    in   presence   of 
Wrightson  Jones,  John  C.  Lear." 
(Attested  also  by  N.  Harrington.) 


"To  all  whom  it  may  concern :   Be  it  known  that 
I,  Hugh  Auld,  of  the  city  of  Baltimore,  in  Balti- 


94  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

more  county  of  the  state  of  Maryland,  for  divers 
good  causes  and  considerations  me  thereunto  mov- 
ing, have  released  from  slavery,  liberated,  manu- 
mitted, and  set  free,  and  by  these  presents  do 
hereby  release  from  slavery,  liberate,  manumit, 
and  set  free,  MY  NEGRO  MAN,  named  FRED- 
ERICK BAILEY,  otherwise  called  DOUG- 
LASS, being  of  the  age  of  twenty-eight  years,  or 
thereabouts,  and  able  to  work  and  gain  a  suf- 
ficient livelihood  and  maintenance;  and  him  the 
said  negro  man,  named  FREDERICK  DOUG- 
LASS, I  do  declare  to  be  henceforth  free,  manu- 
mitted, and  discharged  from  all  manner  of  servi- 
tude to  me,  my  executors  and  administrators  for- 
ever. 

"In  witness  whereof,  I  the  said  Hugh  Auld, 
have  hereunto  set  my  hand  and  seal  the  fifth  of 
December,  in  the  year  one  thousand  eight  hundred 
and  forty-six. 

HUGH  AULD. 
"Sealed  and  delivered  in  presence  of  T.  Hanson 

Belt,  James  N.  S.  T.  Wright." 


After  about  two  years  in  England  he  returned 
in  1847,  took  up  his  home  in  Rochester,  N.  Y., 
founded  a  paper  on  money  furnished  by  English 
friends,  and  for  twenty  years,  in  one  of  the  most 
eventful  periods  of  all  history,  he  worked  as 
never  ex-slave  worked  before  to  free  a  fellow- 
slave.  He  risked  life  and  liberty  as  an  officer  of 
the  "Underground  Railroad."  This  is  the  only 
great  railroad  system  in   the  United  States   on 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  95 

which  Negroes  never  suffered  any  kind  of  "jim- 
crow,"  and  they  held  all  sorts  of  positions,  from 
stockholders  and  division  superintendents  down  to 
engineers  and  porters.  Trains  ran  mostly  on  a 
night  schedule,  and  in  one  general  direction,  from 
South  to  North.  Douglass's  Rochester  home  was 
the  last  station  this  side  of  Canada,  and  he  had 
as  high  as  eleven  passengers  at  one  time. 

Editing  a  paper  made  Douglass  read  and 
think, — and  reading  and  thinking  brought  him  to 
disagree  with  some  of  the  tenets  of  the  Garrison- 
ian  anti-slavery  school.  Garrison  held  that  hon- 
orable abolitionists  should  not  vote  or  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  United  States  Constitution, 
which  he  regarded  as  a  slaveholding  instrument, — 
or,  as  he  expressed  it,  a  covenant  with  death  and 
an  agreement  with  hell.  The  abolitionists  then 
wanted  the  free  states  to  separate  from  the  slave 
states.  Douglass  came  to  feel  that  the  Constitu- 
tion is  in  spirit  an  instrument  of  freedom,  inas- 
much as  those  who  framed  it  had  shown  that  they 
were  ashamed  to  use  the  word  SLAVERY,  pre- 
sumably hoping  that  the  institution  would  soon 
end.  And  he  knew  that  for  the  free  states  to  leave 
the  Union  might  consign  his  people  to  endless 
southern  bondage. 

He  became  acquainted  with  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe  and  was  on  intimate  terms  with  John 
Brown,  the  hero  of  Osawatomie  and  Harper's 
Ferry,  the  short-built,  plain-looking  man,  lean  and 
sinewy,  with  rawhide  boots  and  leather  cravat, 
with  iron  will  and  flinty  nerve.     Brown  confided 


96  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

to  him  the  details  of  his  plans  for  a  sort  of  guer- 
rilla warfare  from  the  Allegheny  Mountains,  to 
vex  slavery  and  slaveholders  and  carry  off  their 
slaves  to  Canada.  Meanwhile  the  legislatures, 
courts  and  congresses  of  the  country  were  hot 
with  the  fever  of  impending  conflict.  There  were 
fugitive  slave  laws,  Dred  Scott  decisions,  com- 
promises and  repeals  of  compromises.  One  of 
the  most  horrible  laws  ever  enacted  by  a  civilized 
people  was  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  now  passed 
by  a  recreant  congress.  It  endangered  the  liberty 
of  a  hundred  thousand  industrious  prosperous 
fugitives,  made  it  possible  for  any  two  villains 
to  swear  away  a  free  colored  person's  liberty, 
and  gave  the  judge  in  the  case  twice  as  much  fee 
if  he  condemned  the  victim  as  he  would  get  if 
he  freed  him.  Even  Douglass  was  in  danger: 
his  purchase  was  of  doubtful  validity,  the  owner 
not  having  possession  of  the  property  at  the  time. 
But  no  act  of  legislation  ever  did  more  to  free 
the  slaves  than  did  this  abominable  law.  It  stung 
decent  people  into  a  fearful  resentment.  Indeed 
the  Negro  will  always  have  to  thank  the  aggres- 
siveness of  the  slave  power  for  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  cause  of  freedom  was  pushed  forward 
in  this  last  decade  of  slavery. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  war  of  words  and  con- 
flict of  principles,  John  Brown,  who  had  taken 
eye  for  eye  and  tooth  for  tooth  in  Kansas,  deter- 
mined to  throw  himself  like  a  firebrand.  Three 
weeks  before  his  famous  "raid"  he  asked  Doug- 
lass to  meet  him  at  Chambersburg,  Pa.    Douglass 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  97 

did  so  and  brought  with  him  Shields  Green,  a 
black  fugitive  from  South  Carolina  and  next  to 
Brown  the  bravest  man  at  Harper's  Ferry. 
Douglass  tried  to  persuade  Brown  not  to  make 
the  raid,  seeing  the  physical  impossibility  of  suc- 
cess. But  Brown  said  in  effect  that  if  he  could 
not  succeed,  he  could  die  and  so  awake  the  sleep- 
ing conscience  of  a  nation. 

After  the  raid  the  United  States  Government, 
then  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Buchanan  and  the  slave- 
holders, determined  to  arrest  all  who  were  in  any 
way  intimate  with  Brown  and  turn  them  over  to 
the  tender  mercies  of  Virginia.  Brown  impli- 
cated nobody  and  said  that  he  alone  was  responsi- 
ble for  all  that  he  had  done.  But  if  they  could 
not  have  proven  that  Douglass  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  raid,  they  could  have  proven  that  he 
was  Frederick  Douglass,  which  would  have  been 
enough  to  hang  him  in  any  court  of  the  South 
at  this  particular  time.  So  he  again  fled  from 
the  terrible  claws  of  the  American  eagle  to  a 
place  of  refuge  under  the  mane  of  the  British  lion. 
His  connection  with  Brown  made  him  exceedingly 
popular  in  England,  and  when  he  returned  to  the 
United  States  six  months  later,  because  of  the 
death  of  his  daughter,  he  found  sentiment  so 
changed  that  Brown  had  been  transformed  from 
a  felon  into  a  martyr  and  the  country  was  fast 
moving  on  to  the  election  of  Lincoln  and  war. 
There  were  three  candidates  in  the  presidential 
field,  every  one  running  on  the  "Negro  Question"  : 
Breckenridge  for  the  right  of  the  slaveholder  to 


98  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

carry  his  slaves  into  any  territory  regardless  of 
the  wishes  of  its  people ;  Stephen  A.  Douglass  for 
the  right  of  the  people  of  a  territory  to  vote 
slavery  in  or  out;  and  Abraham  Lincoln  for  the 
right  of  Congress  to  prohibit  slavery  from  the 
territories  altogether  and  confine  it  to  the  then 
present  slave  states.  Nobody  had  any  idea  of 
freeing  the  Negro  where  he  was  already  a  slave. 
But  the  ways  of  Providence  often  mock  the  ways 
of  man.  Man  is  not  always  master  of  his  own 
fate ;  if  he  were  it  would  oftener  be  a  very  sorry 
fate. 

Douglass  at  once  saw  that  Lincoln's  position 
was  the  only  hope  of  the  slave ;  for  to  attempt  to 
limit  slavery  was  to  fight  slavery.  The  training 
of  a  slaveholder  is  such  that  he  will  not  submit 
his  wishes  to  debate.  He  is  used  to  saying  to 
men,  "Go  yonder,"  and  they  go — "Come  here," 
and  they  come — "Stay  there,"  and  they  stay. 
Such  a  man  will  not  brook  dictation,  arbitration 
or  limitation.  If  you  elect  Lincoln,  we  will  leave 
the  Union,  they  said;  and  after  Lincoln  was 
elected  one  of  their  leaders  said.  If  you  gave  us 
a  blank  sheet  of  paper  on  which  to  write  our  own 
conditions  for  staying  in  the  Union,  we  would  not 
stay. 

So,  behind  the  candidacy  of  Lincoln  Douglass 
threw  himself  with  all  the  might  of  his  tongue  and 
his  pen.  It  is  familiar  history  now,  how  the  North 
was  at  first  a  very  lamb  in  its  desire  for  peace; 
how  the  guns  of  Sumter  changed  the  lamb  into  a 
lion,  "and  his  roar  was  terrible," — but  he  only 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  99 

roared  and  showed  his  teeth,  at  first  reluctant  to 
fight:  How  Lincoln  and  the  whole  administration 
declared  to  the  world  that  the  war  would  not  be 
an  abolition  war,  that  however  the  war  might  end 
the  master  would  be  master  still  and  the  slave 
still  slave;  how  Providence  confounded  these 
declarations;  how  under  the  shock  of  rebellion  the 
nation  began  to  totter;  how  Douglass  and  others 
urged  the  administration  to  unchain  in  the  nation's 
defence  the  nation's  great  black  hand;  how  these 
blacks,  unchained,  rushed  to  the  front  two  hun- 
dred thousand  strong  and  stayed  a  nation's  fall. 
The  details  would  be  a  long  story.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  Frederick  Douglass  did  more  than  any  other 
man  to  recruit  and  rally  the  Negro  troops.  He 
knew  that  the  Negro  troops  were  not  treated 
fairly,  but  he  saw  at  the  other  end  freedom. 
"Hereditary  bondmen,  know  ye  not 
Who  would  be  free  themselves  must  strike  the 
blow?" 
At  once  the  54th  Massachusetts,  a  Negro  regi- 
ment recruited  mainly  through  the  efforts  of 
Douglass,  by  its  gallant  and  terrible  assault  on 
Fort  Wagner,  put  at  rest  in  one  night  more  ques- 
tions about  Negro  manhood,  courage  and  worth 
than  could  have  been  settled  by  a  century  of  de- 
bate. And  if  any  man  opens  his  mouth  to  say 
that  the  Negro  was  given  his  freedom  and  did 
not  win  it,  let  him  pause  long  enough  to  read 
how  200,000  blacks  rushed  into  a  bloody  war, 
where  when  captured  they  were  not  treated  as 
prisoners  but  butchered  or  sold  like  cattle, — and 


loo  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

how,  according  to  the  testimony  of  the  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  armies  and  navies  of  the 
United  States,  they  saved  a  nation's  life. 

After  the  war  he  saw  that  his  people  were  but 
half  free,  and  that  freedom  without  citizenship 
was  a  mockery  and  might  become  worse  than  slav- 
ery. In  acquiring  the  franchise  for  the  Negro 
race  Douglass  bore  a  part  second  only  to  that 
of  Charles  Sumner  of  the  United  States  Senate. 
As  usual  the  reasons  urged  against  Negro  en- 
franchisement were  the  best  reasons  for  It.  For 
instance,  it  was  urged  that  It  would  bring  the  ex- 
slave  into  conflict  and  antagonism  to  the  ex- 
master;  which  Is  an  acknowledgment  that  the  two 
might  have  conflicting  interests,  and  becomes  the 
best  possible  reason  for  giving  the  Negro  the  bal- 
lot and  a  fair  chance  to  defend  his  own.  If  no 
conflicting  Interests  were  ever  possible  between 
white  and  black  people  in  this  country,  It  would  be 
a  sound  reason  for  not  enfranchising  the  Negro  or 
for  disfranchising  the  white  man. 

Douglass  had  sense  enough  to  be  aggressive. 
Truth  is  always  truth,  whatever  opinion  might  be. 
And  I  only  speak  the  truth  when  I  say  that  the 
only  way  in  the  world  to  break  up  an  unreasonable 
prejudice  is  to  contradict  it  In  practice.  Prejudice 
is  from  custom,  and  how  can  a  custom  ever  be 
displaced  unless  the  opposite  custom  Is  established 
by  practice?  Those  who  have  rights  to  defend 
must  be  vigilant;  those  who  have  rights  to  ac- 
quire must  be  aggressive.  Such  is  human  nature. 
To  complain  that  it  should  not  be  so  is  to  com- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  loi 

plain  against  the  weather.  No  people  ever  ac- 
quired rights  by  sitting  down  and  waiting  for 
them.  Rights  never  come — calamities  come — 
rights,  you  must  go  and  get  them. 

For  over  half  a  century  Douglass  retained  the 
respect  and  esteem  of  his  fellow-man,  espoused 
the  cause  of  woman's  suffrage  and  every  other 
honorable  ambition,  and  held  many  positions  of 
honor  and  trust  under  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment and  elsewhere, — among  which  were  Com- 
missioner to  San  Domingo,  member  of  the  upper 
house  of  the  legislature  of  the  District  of  Colum- 
bia, Marshall  of  the  District,  Recorder  of  Deeds 
in  the  District,  Presidential  Elector  at  large  for 
the  state  of  New  York,  Minister  to  Hayti,  Presi- 
dent of  the  Freedmen's  bank,  and  his  last  public 
service  was  as  Commissioner  for  the  republic  of 
Hayti  at  the  World's  Columbian  Exposition  in 
Chicago.  On  February  20,  1895,  at  Anacostia 
Heights,  a  suburb  of  the  city  of  Washington  and 
where  he  had  lived  for  many  years,  "he  died  in 
action  with  his  armor  on." 

The  city  of  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  has  erected  for 
him  a  bronze  monument;  he  has  built  for  himself 
more  enduring  monuments  in  the  hearts  of  the 
bronze-colored  American  group  for  whom  he 
spent  his  life. 

I  know  no  better  model  for  ambitious  youth  or 
struggling  people.  His  life  completes  the  record 
of  human  degradation,  endeavor  and  rise.  Are 
you  poor?  Here  is  one  who  did  not  possess  his 
own  soul  and  body;  in  his  own  words,  his  body 


102  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

belonged  to  his  master  and  his  soul  belonged  to 
God,  so  he  poor  fellow  had  nothing  left  for  him- 
self. Are  you  scorned?  Here  is  one  from  the 
lowest  condition  to  which  humanity  can  be  de- 
pressed. Are  you  buffeted?  Here  is  one  who  was 
beaten  with  stripes.  Are  you  denied  the  privi- 
leges of  a  man?  He  was  not  accorded  the  com- 
forts of  a  horse.  Are  you  handicapped  in  the 
struggle  for  education?  Here  Is  one  whose  study 
hours  were  stolen  at  the  risk  of  the  lash,  in  the 
school  of  adversity,  with  oppression  as  his  teacher. 
Is  there  hope  for  you?  Can  you  succeed?  He 
did.  From  the  bottom  of  despair  he  reached  the 
top  of  success.  He  was  born  to  the  status  of  the 
cattle,  by  his  own  exertions  he  freed  his  body  and 
liberated  his  mind,  he  literally  wrung  recognition 
from  the  reluctant  hands  of  a  public  long  steeped 
in  the  idea  of  the  essential  Inferiority  of  his  kind, 
he  fixed  the  attention  of  two  continents,  and  when 
he  died,  a  literary  friend  of  the  Caucasian  race  in 
a  volume  of  sonnets  to  the  memory  of  Frederick 
Douglass  pronounced  him  "the  noblest  slave  that 
ever  God  set  free." 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 

"My  blood  is  as  good  as  that  of  those  who 
plume  themselves  upon  their  ancestry." 

The  above  are  the  words  of  Alexander  Hamil- 
ton. Hamilton  was  a  Negro.  He  was  a  Negro 
according  to  the  definition  accepted  in  our  day. 
That  is,  he  was  a  man  whose  blood  was  mixed 
black  and  white.  Alexander  Hamilton,  like  the 
French  dramatist  Alexandre  Dumas,  and  the 
Russian  poet  Alexander  Sergeievitch  Poushkin, 
and  the  American  poet  Henry  Timrod,  and  the 
English  poet  Robert  Browning,  had  Negro  blood. 
Some  of  these  remarkable  men  had  more  Negro 
blood  than  many  of  the  American  Negroes  whom 
we  see  every  day.  And  it  was  only  the  merciful 
accidents  of  birth  and  circumstance  that  saved 
them  from  Jim  Crow  cars  and  disfranchisement. 
Yea,  if  Poushkin  and  Dumas  had  lived  in  Georgia 
and  Alabama  instead  of  in  Russia  and  France, 
they  would  have  been  slaves. 

Unjust  sneers  were  cast  upon  Hamilton  because 
of  his  parentage.  And  perhaps  his  impetuous  and 
imperious  soul  was  smarting  under  a  sense  of  this 
injustice  when  he  gave  expression  to  the  above 
words. 

But  it  is  not  our  purpose  to  deal  with  Hamilton 
here  as  a  Negro,  but  as  a  MAN, — for  we  admire 


104  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

him  for  his  manhood  and  not  for  his  ancestry. 
And  yet  we  will  make  no  pretense  of  suppressing 
the  genuine  pleasure  which  these  FACTS  give 
us  in  confuting  and  confounding  the  race-bigoted, 
color-mad  theorists. 

Any  one  who  is  familiar  with  sketches  and 
biographies  of  Alexander  Hamilton  has  doubtless 
noted  the  obscurity  that  hangs  about  his  parent- 
age: some  say  that  his  mother  died  before  he 
was  old  enough  to  remember  her,  others  say  that 
she  came  with  him  to  New  York  when  he  was 
sixteen  years  old;  it  is  pretty  generally  agreed  that 
his  father  was  of  Scotch  extraction  and  that 
his  mother  was  a  "native"  of  the  Isle  of  Nevis  in 
the  British  West  Indies;  but  some  assert  shortly 
that  he  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  a  rich  West 
Indian  planter,  and  some,  that  his  mother  was  a 
"French"  widow  of  Huguenot  descent,  who  for 
some  obscure  reason  had  been  divorced  from  her 
former  husband,  ahd  one  of  Hamilton's  biograph- 
ers (Lodge)  says  that  he  was  "dark  of  skin." 
One  well-known  writer  went  to  the  West  Indies 
to  look  up  Hamilton's  early  life,  with  the  inten- 
tion of  writing  his  biography,  but  finding  on  every 
hand  evidences  that  he  was  a  Negro,  she  fell 
into  the  mood  of  fiction  and  wrote  "The  Con- 
queror" instead. 

Thank  heaven,  Hamilton's  claim  upon  the 
gratitude  and  admiration  of  mankind  rests  in 
his  life  and  deeds  and  not  in  his  ancestry. 

He  was  born  in  January,  1757,  on  the  island  of 
Nevis,  the  son  of  some  man  and  some  woman. 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  105 

Like  most  creatures,  plant  or  animal,  of  the  south- 
ern clime,  he  matured  rapidly.  At  the  age  of  thir- 
teen he  was  put  to  work  in  a  merchant's  counting 
house  at  St.  Croix.  His  precocity  and  genius  were 
at  once  recognized  by  his  friends,  and  in  1772  they 
sent  him  to  the  continental  colonies  to  be  edu- 
cated. In  a  school  of  EHzabethtown,  N.  J.,  he 
quickly  prepared  for  King's  (now  Columbia) 
College  in  New  York. 

The  anti-British  sentiment  was  now  growing 
hot  and  events  were  rapidly  moving  toward  the 
Revolution  of  1776.  In  the  midst  of  the  passions 
and  excitements  of  the  times  it  is  interesting  to 
see  this  lad  of  seventeen  years  deliberately  read- 
ing the  discussions  and  looking  into  the  merits  of 
both  sides,  preparing  to  make  his  choice.  The 
colonies  were  not  his  home,  their  quarrel  was  not 
his  quarrel;  but  he  decided,  spite  of  "Tory"  of- 
fers, that  justice  and  humanity  lay  on  the  side  of 
the  Patriots  and  espoused  the  cause  of  the  latter. 

And  immediately  that  magnanimity  and  broad- 
ness of  sympathy,  characteristic  of  Hamilton's 
whole  life,  comes  out  in  this  ardent,  high-spirited 
boy:  he  opposed  the  mobbish  spirit  of  the  "pa- 
triots," plead  for  justice  and  mercy,  and  endan- 
gered his  life  by  interposing  himself  between  the 
mob  and  the  Tory. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen  he  was  writing  anony- 
mous articles  in  defense  of  the  Patriot  cause 
which  the  public  mind  was  ascribing  to  the  emi- 
nent and  mature  statesman,  John  Jay.  He  intro- 
duced himself  to  the  public  by  startling  his  hearers 


io6  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

with  his  grasp  of  the  situation  at  a  political  stump- 
speaking  of  the  Patriots. 

In  1776  he  used  his  last  "allowance"  sent  by 
his  friends  from  the  West  Indies  in  fitting  up  a 
company  of  artillery,  commissioned  by  the  gov- 
ernment of  New  York.  Captain  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton of  this  New  York  light  battery  was  now 
scarcely  twenty,  but  his  gallantry  at  once  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  commander-in-chief,  and  in 
1777,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  he  became  aide-de- 
camp to  the  most  towering  character  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  Gen.  George  Washington  of  Vir- 
ginia. Hamilton  was  very  useful  to  Washing- 
ton, managing  all  of  the  General's  tremendous 
correspondence  with  the  multifarious  state  gov- 
ernments and  with  the  long-winded  and  verbose 
but  headless  and  factious  "Continental  Congress." 

In  personal  character,  self-control,  and  as  a 
leader  of  the  masses  of  men,  Washington  was 
Hamilton's  superior,  and  the  superior  of  every 
other  American  of  his  day.  In  the  genius  of  gov- 
ernment, constructive  ability,  and  as  a  leader  of 
the  leaders  of  men,  Hamilton  was  Washington's 
superior,  and  the  superior  of  every  other  man  of 
his  day. 

In  1780  Hamilton  acquired  the  greatest  for- 
tune that  can  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  good  man, — a 
good  wife,  in  the  person  of  a  daughter  of  Gen. 
Philip  Schuyler,  a  veteran  of  his  adopted  state. 

The  next  year  an  incident  happened  which  il- 
lustrates the  difference  between  the  characters  of 
Hamilton    and    Washington.      Washington    ad- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  107 

dressed  Hamilton  with  the  authority  of  a  com- 
mander and  a  superior  and  Hamilton  resigned 
his  staff  position  on  the  spot.  Washington  apolo- 
gized, but  the  proud  spirit  of  Hamilton  would  not 
again  accept  the  position.  This  gives  us  a  glimpse 
of  Washington's  true  superiority.  But  fortun- 
ately for  the  American  Republic  the  friendship 
of  these  two  men  was  not  broken  or  permanently 
strained.  He  was  with  Washington  when  Corn- 
wallis  surrendered  and  helped  to  carry  that  last 
great  fight  against  the  British. 

But  Hamilton  was  more  a  statesman  and  finan- 
cier than  a  soldier,  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in 
1782  and  elected  from  New  York  to  the  Conti- 
nental Congress, — a  giant  in  a  body  consisting 
mainly  of  pigmies.  He  at  once  saw  the  weakness 
of  the  "confederacy"  of  states,  that  it  was  in- 
volved in  financial  chaos,  had  lost  respect  and 
confidence,  and  was  in  great  danger  of  becoming 
a  by-word  among  the  nations.  Congress  could 
do  nothing  but  talk  and  it  did  plenty  of  that:  it 
voted  the  veterans  of  the  war  abundance  of  praise 
but  not  one  cent  of  cash.  Hamilton  was  not  sorry 
to  return  to  private  life  and  the  practice  of  law 
in  1783. 

Meanwhile  "Shay's  Rebellion"  and  jealousies 
and  commercial  difficulties  of  the  different  states, 
were  teaching  the  thoughtful  what  Hamilton's 
logic  had  not  taught  them :  that  the  present  gov- 
ernment was  weak  and  needed  to  be  superseded 
by  a  stronger  one.  Chnton,  governor  of  New 
York  and  leader  of  the  destructionists,  was  trying 


io8  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

to  break  up  the  Confederacy,  and  did.  But  for- 
tunately (and  no  thanks  to  him)  this  act  of  de- 
struction made  way  for  a  better  and  truer  Union. 
Hamilton  was  elected  from  New  York  to  a  con- 
vention to  meet  at  Annapolis  in  1786  and  unify 
the  commerce  of  the  states.  He  went,  when  be- 
hold, there  were  the  representatives  of  only  four 
states, — such  was  the  indifference  of  the  times  to 
anything  like  a  national  spirit  or  a  centralized  gov- 
ernment. But  this  small  meeting  performed  one 
service:  it  issued  a  call  for  another  meeting  which 
resulted  in  the  famous  Constitutional  Convention 
at  Philadelphia  in  1787. 

Hamilton  a  member  of  the  minority  party  in 
New  York,  tactfully  coerced  his  state  to  be  rep- 
resented at  this  Convention  through  himself  and 
two  members  of  the  opposition  party.  At  the 
opening  of  this  convention  he  made  the  great 
speech  of  his  life. 

Great  as  had  been  his  services  to  his  adopted 
country  theretofore,  he  now  began  the  Herculean 
labors  for  which  America  and  all  her  heirs  should 
pay  him  everlasting  gratitude.  It  is  fitting  right 
here  to  notice  just  what  were  his  distinctive  ideas 
of  a  general  American  government.  His  scheme 
might  be  briefly  called  an  "Aristocratic  Republic"; 
the  President  and  Senators  to  hold  office  "during 
good  behavior,"  the  state  Governors  to  be  ap- 
pointed by  the  President  and  to  have  absolute 
veto  power  over  all  state  legislation.  This,  of 
course,  would  have  made  the  central  Government 
everything  and  the  state  nothing. 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  109 

It  can  be  readily  believed  that  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton was  the  only  man  in  America  who  had  both 
the  physical  and  the  moral  courage  to  make  such 
a  proposition  to  the  democracy-mad  fathers  of 
the  American  Revolution.  His  idea  did  not  pre- 
vail to  its  full  extent  but  It  performed  its  mission 
in  toning  down  the  French-revolutionary  senti- 
ment of  the  times;  it  caused  the  government  that 
was  organized  to  be  made  stronger  than  it  other- 
wise would  have  been.  The  first  mad  mutterings 
of  the  French  reign  of  terror  and  rain  of  blood 
were  arousing  the  hearts  of  men  in  the  utmost 
limits  of  civilization;  in  France  it  was  "liberty, 
equality,  fraternity,  or  death," — and  the  greatest 
of  these  was  Death.  Hamilton  saw,  or  thought  he 
saw,  that  the  American  zealots  were  tending  rap- 
idly toward  the  brink  of  the  same  abyss. 

The  Constitution  was  adopted  as  we  know  it. 
Hamilton  signed  it  for  all  New  York,  as  his  two 
opposition  colleagues  refused  their  assent.  And 
the  next  labor  of  the  American  Hercules  was  to 
secure  its  ratification  by  his  stubborn  and  Intract- 
able state.  In  defense  of  the  Constitution  he 
published,  with  some  assistance  from  Jay  and 
Madison,  the  series  of  essays  known  as  the  "Fed- 
eralist," which  gives  him  a  place  in  the  literature 
of  this  country;  and  then  he  went  into  his  state 
convention  supported  by  a  minority  of  only  19 
out  of  its  65  members,  and  when  the  question 
came  to  vote,  the  Constitution  was  ratified  by  a 
majority  of  three.  This  is  one  of  the  greatest 
recorded  victories  of  persuasive  and  argumenta- 


no  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

tive  oratory.  Great  was  the  joy  of  his  heart  in 
thus  assuring  the  accomplishment  of  the  ambition 
of  his  hfe, — the  American  Republic:  for  the 
strategic  position  of  New  York  rendered  it  im- 
perative that  it  be  brought  into  the  Union. 

The  new  government  was  formed,  and  Wash- 
ington was  made  its  first  Chief  Executive.  Here 
again  we  have  a  pleasing  reminder  of  the  master- 
ful character  of  that  great  Virginian.  His  quick 
and  superior  knowledge  of  men  always  stood  him 
in  good  stead.  The  greatest  task  of  American 
history  was  to  confront  the  first  head  of  the 
United  States  Treasury:  foreign  and  domestic 
credit  were  to  be  established,  and  order  was  to 
be  brought  out  of  general  financial  chaos.  Wash- 
ington accordingly  selected  for  this  post  a  man 
who  Talleyrand  afterwards  said  had  the  greatest 
skill  "in  the  appHcation  of  the  elementary  prin- 
ciples of  government  to  practical  administration," 
a  man  who  was  only  32  years  old,  Alexander 
Hamilton.  The  keen  insight  and  statesmanship 
of  the  new  Secretary  were  at  once  brought  to  bear 
on  the  condition  of  the  new  nation  by  his  great 
report  to  Congress  on  the  Public  Credit.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  at  this  time  the  Constitution 
was  a  mere  body  of  rules  in  which  every  effort 
had  been  made  by  the  jealous  states  to  limit  and 
throttle  the  central  government;  it  was  a  mere 
lifeless  form  that  could  not  even  authorize  the 
United  States  to  levy  taxes,  until  Hamilton  blew 
into  it  the  breath  of  life  and  made  it  the  one 
supreme  thing  in  this  country.     He  advanced  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  iii 

doctrine  of  the  "implied  powers"  of  the  Consti- 
tution, and  showed  to  the  satisfaction  of  Wash- 
ington that  "to  provide  for  the  general  welfare" 
could  be  construed  to  give  the  central  government 
authority  to  establish  a  National  Bank  and  to  levy 
an  excise  tax.  And  when  the  levying  of  this  tax 
caused  a  "whiskey  rebellion"  in  Pennsylvania,  he 
won  respect  for  the  Government  by  putting  it 
down  with  a  show  of  national  troops. 

He  wished  for  honorable  and  respectable  gov- 
ernment and  did  not  care  to  cheat  the  Revolu- 
tionary veterans  out  of  their  soldier's  pay;  so  his 
financial  policy  embraced  payment  of  both  the 
Foreign  and  the  Domestic  Debt,  and  Assumption 
of  the  war-debts  of  the  States.  He  advocated  the 
"double  standard"  in  coinage  and  originated  poli- 
cies upon  which  great  political  parties  have  since 
divided. 

And  what  was  Jefferson  doing,  the  "father"  of 
our  present  Democratic  party?  Jefferson  was  at 
this  time  Secretary  of  State,  but  whenever  Wash- 
ington had  a  difficult  matter  of  state  or  foreign 
policy,  he  went  to  Hamilton,  and  not  to  Jefferson, 
for  his  solution.  He  wanted  a  man  who  had  the 
energy  to  work  out  a  plan  from  start  to  finish. 

No  clearer  emphasis  can  be  put  upon  a  truly 
great  and  constructive  genius  like  Hamilton  than 
by  showing  his  relation  to  a  destructive  and  "op- 
position" nature  like  Thomas  Jefferson.  Hamil- 
ton's time  was  all  spent  in  planning  and  building; 
the  chief  activity  of  Jefferson  was  in  opposing 
what  Hamilton  had  planned  and  tearing  down 


112  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

what  Hamilton  was  trying  to  build.  They  re- 
spectively represent  the  positive  and  negative 
forces  of  early  American  history.  It  Is  significant 
that  Hamilton's  followers  assumed  the  name  of 
"Federalists,"  that  is,  constructive  unionists,  and 
Jefferson's  party  became  the  "anti-Federalists," 
that  is,  destructive  disunionists.  The  successor  to 
the  Hamiltonian  party  is  the  present  Republican 
party;  and  the  Jeffersonian  party  survives  in  the 
present  Democratic  party.  It  makes  us  smile 
when  we  hear  a  "stumping"  politician  say,  "I  am 
a  Jeffersonian  Democrat,"  or  that  he  beheves  In 
"the  fundamental  principles  laid  down  by  Thomas 
Jefferson."  Do  you  know  what  these  "funda- 
mental principles"  are?  Stripped  of  all  their 
cunning  indirection  and  vituperation,  and  reduced 
to  their  lowest  and  simplest  terms,  they  were 
simply  this:  "Down  with  Hamilton  and  the  ac- 
cursed Federalists!"  The  French  fever  in  Ameri- 
can politics  rendered  the  populace  violently  hos- 
tile to  anything  that  smacked  of  aristocracy  or 
monarchy;  Jefferson  was  cunning  enough  to  take 
advantage  of  this  passion  and  use  it  for  all  it 
was  worth  against  Hamilton's  centralization  poli- 
cies. For  the  sake  of  appearances  he  changed 
the  name  of  his  "anti-Feds"  to  "Republicans."  It 
is  the  irony  of  fate  that  the  party  which  he  op- 
posed has  since  acquired  that  name,  and  that  the 
aristocratic  republicanism  which  he  so  bitterly  op- 
posed in  Hamilton  afterwards  attained  its  highest 
and  most  threatening  reahzation  in  his  own  dear 
Virginia  and  the  other  slave  oligarchies  of  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  113 

South.  Before  Jeffersoa  became  such  a  bitter 
enemy  to  Hamilton  he  had  made  a  political  "deal" 
with  him:  he  had  secured  votes  for  Hamilton's 
Assumption  policy  and  Hamilton  had  secured 
votes  to  have  the  national  capital  located  in  the 
South.  The  success  of  Assumption  was  particu- 
larly offensive  to  the  "anti-Federahsts,"  and  Jef- 
ferson explained  his  embarrassing  deal  by  saying 
that  he  had  been  "duped  by  Hamilton."  The 
truth  is  that  an  ingenuous  man  like  Hamilton 
could  succeed  at  anything  better  than  at  duping 
a  fox  like  Jefferson.  When  duping  was  done  Jef- 
ferson did  it:  he  duped  old  man  Madison  into 
an  essay  polemic  with  Hamilton,  a  thing  which 
Jefferson  feared  for  himself.  Madison  was  not 
a  half  match  for  Hamilton;  Aaron  Burr  has  tes- 
tified that  for  a  man  to  put  himself  on  paper 
against  Hamilton  was  to  seal  his  own  destruction. 

When  there  was  trouble  between  France  and 
England  in  1793  Hamilton  inspired  Washington 
with  a  neutrahty  policy  on  principles  which  gave 
rise  to  the  "Monroe  Doctrine,"  which  could  more 
properly  be  called  the  "Hamilton  Doctrine." 
Jefferson  on  the  other  hand  wanted  this  country 
to  act  in  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  with 
France,  a  policy  which  Hamilton  saw  would  have 
been  dangerous  for  America.  But  Jefferson,  who 
always  influenced  people  through  their  prejudices, 
did  not  lose  the  opportunity  to  call  Hamilton's 
sympathies  "British." 

Jefferson's  narrow  political  ideas  rendered  him 
so  uncomfortable  in  the  Cabinet  of  Washington 


114  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

that  he  was  forced  to  resign  his  Secretaryship. 
Hamilton  stayed  at  his  post  till  1795,  when  he  re- 
signed after  demanding  a  full  investigation  of  his 
official  conduct,  to  justify  himself  against  the 
many  slanders  and  charges  of  his  enemies.  It 
is  hardly  needful  to  say  that  the  investigation  left 
his  official  integrity  without  a  stain. 

Hamilton  now  went  back  to  the  practice  of  law 
and  to  private  citizenship,  but  he  continued  to 
be  the  influential  adviser  of  President  Washing- 
ton. He  was,  in  every  good  sense  of  the  term, 
the  poHtical  "boss"  of  his  party.  He  supported 
the  unpopular  "Jay  treaty"  with  England.  And 
in  the  presidential  election  which  followed,  al- 
though Adams  was  not  his  personal  choice  he 
supported  him  as  the  regular  nominee  of  the 
party.  Jefferson,  the  nominee  of  the  opposition, 
was  defeated.  Now,  this  man  Adams  was  a 
small  man  in  mental  stature  and  statecraft.  He 
hated  Hamilton  and  Hamilton  made  the  ingenuous 
mistake  of  letting  him  know  that  he  was  not  his 
personal  choice  for  President.  This  break  be- 
tween its  two  leaders  sealed  the  fate  of  the  Fed- 
eralist party. 

In  our  little  war  with  France  in  1798  Adams 
asked  Washington  to  take  command  of  the  Army. 
Washington  accepted  only  on  condition  that  Ham- 
ilton be  made  chief  of  staff  and  be  given  the  full 
commission  for  organizing  the  army  and  getting 
it  ready  for  the  field.  This  greatly  displeased 
Adams  but  for  fear  of  popular  wrath  he  could 
not  bicker  with  Washington,  and  yielded.     Ham- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  115 

ilton  soon  had  an  army  on  foot  which  might  have 
kept  Austerlitz  out  of  history,  had  Napoleon  come 
to  America.  But  amicable  relations  were  re-es- 
tablished and  the  war  cloud  passed.  But  Ham- 
ilton's labors  had  borne  abiding  fruit  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  military  school  at  West  Point. 

Hamilton  was  an  imperialist:  if  hostilities  had 
continued  he  intended  to  seize  Florida  and  Louisi- 
ana, getting  complete  control  of  the  Mississippi. 
Hamilton  disliked  France  on  principle,  although 
the  French  soldiers  with  Lafayette  had  been  much 
attached  to  Hamilton.  His  dislike  of  pure  and 
unrestrained  democracy  caused  him  to  support 
the  ill-fated  Alien  and  Sedition  laws. 

The  above  laws  together  with  the  utter  lack 
of  tact  in  President  Adams  wrecked  the  Federalist 
party.  The  death  of  Washington  left  Hamilton 
commander-in-chief  of  the  Army,  a  thing  which 
Adams  was  pigmy  enough  to  ignore. 

The  quarrel  of  the  leaders  caused  disaffection 
among  the  followers,  and  Pennsylvania  was  lost  to 
the  Federalists.  Then  the  struggle  was  for  New 
York.  Now  Hamilton  had  opposed  to  him  in 
New  York  a  cheap  politician  named  Aaron  Burr, 
a  schemer  and  trickster,  a  master  of  little  things. 
The  noble  mind  of  Hamilton  could  not  stoop  to 
Burr's  petty  methods  of  solicitation  and  vote- 
buying,  and  lost  New  York  City.  And  so,  then  as 
now,  that  meant  the  loss  of  New  York  state,  and 
the  loss  of  political  power  for  the  Federalist  party. 
And  then  came  the  one  blot  upon  Hamilton's 
political  escuthcheon :  he  proposes  to  Governor  Jay 


ii6  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

that  they  secure  the  choice  of  Presidential  electors 
through  the  old  legislature  before  the  new  opposi- 
tion legislature  could  convene,  a  plain  proposition 
to  defraud  the  will  of  the  majority.  In  despair  he 
saw  the  party  of  distruction  headed  by  Jefferson 
coming  into  power  and  argued  the  damnable 
doctrine  that  "to  do  a  great  right  one  is  justified 
in  doing  a  little  wrong." — Jay,  to  his  everlasting 
honor,  said,  "I  won't." 

In  the  election  which  ensued  it  happened  that 
Burr  and  Jefferson,  men  of  the  same  party,  re- 
ceived an  equal  number  of  votes  and  a  higher  num- 
ber than  Adams  and  Pinclvney,  which  left  it  to  the 
House  of  Representatives  to  choose  between  the 
two  former.  Hamilton  knew  the  cheap  and 
unprincipled  man  from  New  York  and  so  used  his 
influence  and  secured  the  election  of  Jefferson. 
This  was  the  last  great  service  which  he  rendered 
his  adopted  country;  he  afterwards  did  only  one 
service  which  can  in  any  way  compare  with  this, 
and  that  was  when  he  again  thwarted  Burr  in  his 
designs  on  the  governorship  of  the  state  of  New 
York. 

Meanwhile  the  busy  lawyer,  Alexander  Hamil- 
ton, had  risen  to  the  head  of  his  profession  in  New 
York  state.  He  was  moving  and  swaying  juries, 
not  with  his  imagination,  but  by  direct,  impas- 
sioned, irresistible  appeals  to  their  heads  and 
hearts.  A  small  and  narrow  nature  like  Burr's  was 
bound  to  become  embittered,  and  to  pass  from  bit- 
terness into  a  mad  rage  against  this  man  for  whose 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  117 

mind  he  was  no  match.  He  swells  with  vengeance 
and  literally  forces  a  quarrel  with  Hamilton. 

The  "code  of  honor"  was  in  force  at  that  day, 
and,  strange  to  say,  men  obeyed  it  even  against 
the  express  command  of  God.  Burr  sent  the 
challenge,  and  Hamilton  accepted,  not  as  a 
believer  in  the  duello,  but  that  no  imputation  of 
personal  cowardice  might  lessen  his  usefulness  in 
those  future  crises  in  which  he  felt  sure  his  country 
would  need  him. — His  preparation  for  the  duel 
was  in  settHng  up  his  business  affairs  and  writing 
his  condemnation  of  the  "code  of  honor."  Burr's 
preparation  was  in  destroying  his  compromising 
letters  from  worthless  women  and  practicing  with 
his  pistol. 

They  met  on  the  bright  morning  of  July  11, 
1804,  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  the  spot  where 
Hamilton's  eldest  son  had  recently  fallen  in  a 
duel.  The  son  was  19;  the  father  is  47.  He  falls 
mortally  wounded  at  the  first  fire.  And  Burr 
becomes  a  leper  and  his  name  anathema  to  the 
American  public. 

They  did  not  know  that  they  loved  him  so  until 
he  was  dead.  And  he  blessed  them  even  in  his 
death,  for  it  created  the  first  solid  sentiment  for 
the  abolition  of  the  "code  of  honor." 

He  was  under-sized,  but  erect  and  courtly  in  his 
bearing.  No  one  could  be  indifferent  toward  him, 
— he  must  be  either  loved  or  hated  with  intensity. 

He  was  a  prophet:  he  wrote  Washington  in 
1798  that  even  then  could  he  see,  in  the  action  of 
the  South,   the  fatal  oncoming  of  sectional  and 


ii8  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

geographical  politics, — how  the  country  "from 
the  South  of  Maryland"  was  becoming  solid, — 
and  he  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  New  York 
manumission  society  for  the  abolishment  of 
slavery. 

He  made  nothing  for  himself,  he  made  every- 
thing for  America.  The  Frenchman  Talleyrand 
saw  him,  after  his  retirement  to  private  life, 
laboring  at  night  in  his  law  office  in  New  York, 
and  said:  "I  have  seen  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
world.  I  have  seen  a  man  laboring  all  night  to 
support  his  family,  who  has  made  the  fortune  of 
a  nation." 

Chief  justice  Marshall,  an  American,  says  that 
Hamilton  is  next  to  Washington.  Talleyrand, 
a  Frenchman  says:  "I  consider  Napoleon,  Fox  and 
Hamilton  the  three  greatest  men  of  our  epoch, 
and  without  hesitation  I  award  the  first  place  to 
Hamilton." 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

We  shall  now  essay  the  praise  of  "arms  and  a 
man."  And  in  praising  the  wisdom  of  the  man 
or  recounting  the  success  of  the  arms  it  is  no  part 
of  our  purpose  to  deride  those  who  disagreed 
with  that  man  nor  to  taunt  those  who  were  van- 
quished by  those  arms. 

We  are  here  in  memory  of  the  humblest  citizen 
of  a  nation  and  in  honor  of  the  greatest  states- 
man of  his  time.  Abraham  Lincoln's  life  ran  the 
whole  gamut  of  American  society.  He  was  born 
into  the  "poor  white  trash"  of  Southern  back- 
woods; he  was  pioneer  and  frontiersman;  he  was 
rail-splitter  and  flatboat-man;  he  was  champion 
wrestler,  cock-pit  umpire  and  saloonkeeper;  he 
was  merchant,  surveyor  and  country  lawyer;  he 
was  the  leading  lawyer  and  politician,  the  acknow- 
ledged head  and  the  champion  orator  of  a  political 
party  in  his  state ;  he  was  legislator,  congressman, 
statesman  and  President;  he  was  leader  in  the 
most  remarkable  war  prior  to  the  20th  century — 
he  was  the  tallest  figure  of  the  nineteenth  century 
— he  was  the  liberator  of  a  race  and  martyr  to  the 
hfe  of  his  country.  Abraham  Lincoln  was  the  first 
president  of  the  United  States  who  was  character- 
istically American. 

One  hundered  and  seven  years  ago  in  what  was 

119 


I20  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

then  Hardin  County,  Kentucky,  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  born.  In  the  aristocratic  sense  of  the  phrase, 
he  was  a  man  of  "no  ancestry."  His  father  prob- 
ably decended  from  people  who  came  first  from 
England  to  Massachusetts,  thence  to  Virginia, 
thence  to  Kentucky.  Abraham  Lincoln's  grand- 
father and  namesake  was  a  brother-in-law  of 
Daniel  Boone  and  was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the 
middle  West.  This  grandfather  had  been  shot 
by  the  Indians  when  Lincoln's  father,  Thomas 
Lincoln,  was  about  six  years  of  age.  Mordecai, 
brother  of  Lincoln's  father,  Is  reputed  to  have 
been  Industrious,  but  Thomas,  the  father  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  was  what  we  might  call,  with- 
out exaggeration,  lazy  and  trifling. 

When  we  consider  this  man's  ancestry  and  early 
surroundings,  we  are  both  enlightened  and  con- 
fused. We  are  enlightened  in  that  we  can  see  in 
his  humble  origin  the  source  of  his  sympathy  for 
his  humblest  fellow-man.  In  his  frontier  life  we  can 
see  the  cause  of  his  manly  independence,  and  In  his 
early  associations  we  can  see  the  foundation  of  his 
firm  faith  in  the  "plain  people," — but  we  are  con- 
fused In  that  we  cannot  find  In  his  immediate  par- 
entage and  environment  the  necessary  stimulus  and 
inspiration,  and  from  his  early  lack  of  opportunity 
we  cannot  account  for  the  development  of  mental 
power,  tact  and  executive  ability.  In  these  latter 
respects  the  law  of  cause  and  effect  is  apparently 
broken. 

His  mother  had  been  one  Nancy  Hanks,  a 
woman  of  very  humble  origin  and  of  a  melancholy 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  121 

disposition.  His  father  Thomas  was  a  thriftless, 
ignorant  fellow  who  loved  to  tell  stories.  He 
seemed  to  lack  the  instinct  or  ambition  to  settle 
down  and  build  a  decent  home,  even  after  he  was 
married.  He  moved  and  moved  and  moved,  and 
like  the  proverbial  "roUing  stone,"  he  gathered  no 
moss.  The  ignorance  and  inconsequentiahty  of 
the  Lincoln  family  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact 
that  it  had  no  uniform  way  of  spelling  its  name : 
sometimes  it  was  spelled  L-i-n-k-h-o-r-n,  sometimes 
L-i-n-c-k-o-r-n,  sometimes  even  L-i-c-k-e-r-n. 

As  is  well  known,  such  poor  white  people  in  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  very  lim- 
ited chances  in  a  slave  commonwealth,  and  so,  to 
escape  the  condition  into  which  slavery  forced  the 
poorer  whites,  when  the  son  was  but  seven  or  eight 
years  old,  the  happy-go-lucky,  unprogressive  father 
loaded  all  the  family  belongings  on  a  boat  of  his 
own  construction  and  floated  down  the  Ohio  to 
Indiana.  This  aimless  traveler  finally  landed  and 
constructed  a  rude  camp  in  a  wild,  uninhabited  re- 
gion near  the  present  town  of  Gentryville,  Indiana. 
The  structure  which  Thomas  Lincoln  here  erected 
to  shelter  his  wife  and  young  children,  cannot  be 
named  out  of  the  terminology  of  the  dwellings  of 
civilized  man.  It  was  not  a  house ;  it  was  what  was 
known  in  pioneer  days  as  a  "half-faced  camp": 
that  is,  it  was  closed  on  only  three  sides  and  its 
floor  was  the  earth.  The  bed  was  constructed 
from  a  number  of  poles  fastened  to  the  logs  in 
one  corner  of  this  cheerless  habitation,  the  outer 
corner  of  the  bed  being  supported  by  a  forked 


122  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

stick.  In  this  camp  the  wife  and  children  shivered 
for  one  whole  winter,  before  Thomas  could  rouse 
himself  to  provide  a  better  dwelling. 

The  melancholy,  feeble  mother  died  in  the  boy's 
childhood;  an  event  which  is  a  great  calamity  to 
most  boys  but  was  a  great  blessing  to  young  Abe, 
for  it  enabled  him  to  acquire  at  the  early  age  of 
ten  a  very  capable,  energetic  and  motherly  step- 
mother. This  God-sent  stepmother  treated  Abe 
and  his  little  sister  with  impartiality  among  her 
own  children;  she  also  aroused  all  of  whatever 
human  aspiration  there  was  in  the  father  Thomas. 
She  became  the  boy's  tutor  and  protector  against 
the  educational  indifference  and  hostility  of  his 
father;  for  Thomas  was  quite  willing  that  his 
posterity  should  forever  go  the  way  their  father 
and  their  fathers  had  gone. 

The  neighbors  say  that  the  boy  Abe  was  "awful 
lazy,"  by  which  they  mean  that  he  was  fonder  of 
thinking  and  studying  and  talking  and  reasoning 
and  story-telling,  than  he  was  of  physical  exertion. 
But  the  sympathetic  stepmother  understood  and 
fostered  the  ambition  of  the  boy.  He  had  been 
to  school  a  little:  all  his  schooling  put  together 
would  not  amount  to  more  than  one  year,  some 
say  not  more  than  six  months.  But  this  hmited  bit 
of  schooling  was  spread  over  a  period  of  nine  years 
and  the  boy  made  good  use  of  what  he  learned  in 
school  by  self-culture  in  the  intervals,  all  of  which 
might  teach  us  the  important  educational  principle 
that  it  is  not  the  quantity  of  schooling  but  the  thor- 
oughness of  it.    The  boy  even  developed  enough 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  123 

of  the  poetic  spirit  to  be  the  author  of  this  stanza : 
"Abraham  Lincoln 
his  hand  and  pen. 
He  will  be  good,  but 
god  Knows  When." 

The  neighborhood  of  Gentryville  was  very  su- 
perstitious :  it  believed  in  the  bad  luck  of  Fridays 
and  in  the  influence  of  the  moon  on  crops.  So 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  superstitious  till  his  dying 
day.  He  was  an  ungainly  looking  lad  and  did  not 
arouse  high  expectations  by  his  personal  appear- 
ance. He  was  lanky  in  appearance,  with  a  head 
of  unmanageable  hair,  and  had  what  at  first  struck 
one  as  a  lazy,  dreamy  look  about  the  eyes.  His 
clothes  were  made  of  tanned  deer  hide,  his  trous- 
ers usually  being  several  inches  too  short  and  his 
suspenders  of  the  one-gallows  kind.  Thus  endowed 
by  nature  and  thus  clad  in  the  garb  of  frontier  pov- 
erty, he  was  not  an  a^ttractive  looking  youngster, 
and  a  lawyer  of  the  time  who  saw  him,  described 
it  as  "the  ungodliest  sight  I  ever  saw."  When 
Abraham  was  twenty-one  his  roving  father  moved 
again,  still  westward,  and  this  time  to  a  place  near 
Decatur,  Illinois.  Thus  at  the  legal  age  of  man- 
hood he  entered,  unknown  and  unrespected,  the 
State  which  was  to  be  the  future  theatre  of  his  life 
— of  the  greatest  life  of  that  State,  of  that  Nation 
and  of  that  Century. 

It  is  impossible  for  any  fiction  to  be  stranger 
than  the  subsequent  life  of  this  poor  boy.  It  was 
now  the  year  1830,  and  in  thirty  years  more  he 
was  to  be  the  chosen  executive  of  the  greatest  re- 


124  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

public  in  history.  He  had  worked  at  hard  manual 
drudgery  since  his  babyhood.  Now  legally  eman- 
cipated from  his  father,  he  helped  to  build  a  house 
for  the  family,  split  rails  to  make  fences,  and  with 
the  small  bundle  of  all  his  earthly  possessions  he 
set  out  into  the  world  to  pursue  his  ambition.  He 
was  physically  powerful  and  wiry;  mentally  slow, 
but  patient,  persistent  and  sure. 

The  story  of  this  man's  rise  from  that  time  forth 
should  make  every  American  proud  of  American 
institutions  and  American  possibilities.  The  fact 
of  his  rise  is  a  proof  of  democracy,  and  the  suc- 
cess of  his  rise  is  a  justification  of  republican  gov- 
ernment. His  first  trip  into  the  wide,  wide  world 
was  taken  in  1831  to  New  Orleans,  where  he  met, 
saw  and  hated  slavery.  On  his  return  to  Illinois 
he  out-wrestled  Jack  Armstrong,  the  champion 
wrestler  of  the  frontier,  and  ran  for  the  General 
Assembly  in  1832.  The  fact  that  a  man  with 
Lincoln's  antecedents  and  attainments  could  enter 
the  race  for  legislator  of  Illinois,  shows  what 
Western  politics  meant  in  that  day.  In  this  his 
first  political  contest  he  announced  a  principle 
which  became  the  leading  principle  of  all  his  after 
life  and  the  chief  element  of  his  great  statesman- 
ship:  he  said:  "so  soon  as  I  discover  my  opinions 
to  be  erroneous,  I  shall  be  ready  to  renounce 
them."  This  was  in  New  Salem.  He  was  beaten 
in  this  contest,  but  he  could  say  with  pride  in  after 
years  that  it  was  the  only  time  in  which  Abraham 
was  beaten  on  a  direct  vote  of  the  people.  In  this 
same  year  he  had  been  a  captain  of  volunteers  in 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  125 

the  Black  Hawk  War,  and  this  man  who  was  des- 
tined to  command  an  army  of  a  million  men,  when 
he  gave  his  first  order  to  this  Httle  volunteer  com- 
pany, received  for  a  reply,  "Go  to  the  devil,  sir." 
Once  forgetting  the  necessary  word  of  command 
for  swinging  his  company  endwise  so  that  it  could 
march  through  a  narrow  gate,  he  simply  shouted: 
"This  company  is  dismissed  for  two  minutes,  when 
it  will  fall  in  again  on  the  other  side  of  the  gate." 
After  his  political  defeat  he  went  into  the  store- 
keeping  business  and  failed:  his  partner  was  too 
lazy  and  Abe  himself  was  too  fond  of  talking  and 
reading  politics  to  attend  the  success  of  the  ven- 
ture. He  was  also  postmaster  of  New  Salem  in 
1833,  carrying  the  letters  in  his  hat,  and  was  as- 
sistant to  the  county  surveyor. 

All  the  while  he  was  studying  law,  which  seemed 
ridiculous  to  his  acquaintances.  He  was  successful 
in  getting  to  the  legislature  in  1834,  where  he 
served  four  terms.  His  chief  acts  In  this  body 
were  protesting  against  its  pro-slavery  resolutions 
and  helping  to  enact  some  very  disastrous  finan- 
cial legislation.  He  had  been  admitted  to  the  bar 
in  1836  and  moved  to  Springfield  in  1837. 

Being  a  very  susceptible  lover  he  first  fell  in  love 
with  a  girl  who  died  of  a  broken  heart  for  another 
man.  He  wished  to  marry  on  the  slightest  provo- 
cation, and  after  a  fruitless  Platonic  affair  with 
another  woman  he  finally  married  Miss  Mary 
Todd  in  1 842,  she  declaring  that  she  did  not  marry 
him  because  he  was  good-looking,  but  because  she 
thought  he  would  some  day  be  President  of  the 


126  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

United  States.  In  1847  he  entered  the  lower  house 
of  congress  for  one  term,  where  he  again  put  him- 
self on  record  against  slavery  extension.  It  was 
not  until  after  this  congressional  term  that  he 
was  finally  able  to  pay  the  last  of  the  debts  occa- 
sioned by  his  business  failure,  and  the  faithful  pay- 
ment won  him  the  useful  title  of  "Honest  Old 
Abe." 

He  now  seemed  to  retire  from  politics  and  to 
settle  down  to  the  practice  of  law,  when  in  1854 
the  country  became  a  volcano  of  political  activity, 
and  Abraham  Lincoln  was  again  aroused  to  take 
a  hand  in  the  greatest  political  battles  in  the  his- 
tory of  free  government.  The  repeal  of  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  had  aroused  the  latent  anti- 
slavery  feeling  in  the  North  to  its  highest  pitch. 
This  compromise  had  limited  the  northward 
spread  of  slavery  to  a  certain  parallel,  and  when 
it  was  repealed,  even  conservative  men  like  Lin- 
coln felt  bound  to  cry  out.  Douglas,  the  Demo- 
cratic statesman,  had  fathered  this  "repeal"  and 
the  enactment  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  which 
was  to  allow  the  people  of  those  territories  to  de- 
cide for  themselves  whether  or  not  they  should 
have  slavery.  In  1854  Lincoln  debated  this  ques- 
tion against  the  Democratic  champion,  and  at 
Peoria  he  said:  "Repeal  the  Missouri  Compro- 
mise, repeal  all  compromises,  repeal  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  repeal  all  past  history,  you 
still  cannot  repeal  human  nature.  It  still  will  be 
the  abundance  of  man's  heart  that  slavery  exten- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  127 

sion  is  wrong,  and  out  of  the  abundance  of  his 
heart  his  mouth  will  continue  to  speak." 

He  at  once  became  the  recognized  champion  of 
those  who  were  opposed  to  the  "repeal"  and  the 
Nebraska  bill.  His  oratorical  powers  had  been 
wonderfully  developed  by  his  constant  law  prac- 
tice since  his  retirement  from  congress.  He  had 
ridden  the  circuit  and  told  stories  with  the  West- 
ern lawyers  and  judges  and  could  fairly  "skin" 
his  opponent  in  court.  His  method  of  argument 
avoided  sophistry  and  lead  straight  to  the  heart 
of  the  matter.  He  was  now  well  known  in  Illinois 
and  was  universally  esteemed,  and  was  at  once 
accepted  as  just  the  man  with  the  qualities  to  cope 
with  the  doughty  Douglas,  the  famous  "Little 
Giant."  This  Douglas  was  called  "Little  Giant" 
because  of  the  smallness  of  his  body  as  compared 
with  the  largeness  of  his  mind. 

Lincoln  had  been  a  Whig.  In  1856  the  Repub- 
lican party  was  formed,  which  crystallized  the  op- 
position to  the  spread  of  slavery.  In  his  state  he 
became  the  undisputed  leader  of  this  party.  Their 
nominee  for  the  presidency  was  defeated  and 
Buchanan  was  elected.  Immediately  followed 
Judge  Taney's  "Dred  Scott  Decision,"  which  fur- 
ther drew  the  line  between  those  who  favored  and 
those  who  opposed  slavery.  Lincoln's  comment 
on  the  Dred  Scott  Decision  is  characteristic,  show- 
ing how  his  mind  penetrated  sham  and  technicality 
and  went  straight  to  the  fundamental  justice  of  a 
case.  He  said:  "It  seems  strange  to  me  that  our 
courts  will  hold  that  a  man  nev^er  loses  his  title  to 


128  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

his  property  if  that  is  stolen,  but  that  he  imme- 
diately loses  his  title  to  himself  when  he  is  stolen." 

The  next  year,  1858,  is  famous  for  the  Lincoln- 
Douglas  debates.  Douglas's  senatorial  term  was 
about  to  expire  and  the  Republicans  put  forward 
Lincoln  to  contest  for  the  prize.  Lincoln  had  al- 
ready magnanimously  yielded  one  senatorial  con- 
test to  secure  the  election  of  an  anti-Nebraska 
Democrat,  and  he  had  lost  a  nomination  for  the 
vice-presidency.  In  the  contest  with  Douglas  he 
won  the  debates  but  lost  the  senatorship.  This 
man's  losses,  however,  later  proved  to  be  his 
greater  gains. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  and  contrast  these 
two  champions.  They  were  both  conservative, 
sober-minded  men.  But  Douglas  was  a  recog- 
nized statesman,  while  Lincoln  was  but  a  novus 
homo.  Few  outside  of  Lincoln's  own  friends  and 
better  acquaintances  expected  him  to  come  off  with 
any  honor  against  the  fierce  "Little  Giant."  Doug- 
las was  quick;  Lincoln  was  deliberate.  Douglas 
was  polished  and  cultured ;  Lincoln  was  an  uncouth, 
poor-mannered  man,  according  to  the  tastes  of 
polite  society.  Douglas  was  cunning  and  devious 
in  argument;  Lincoln  was  straight  as  an  arrow. 
Douglas  was  a  powerful  intellect;  and  so  was 
Lincoln. 

The  battle  was  eagerly  watched  throughout  the 
North,  which  had  become  a  sort  of  political  cal- 
dron, because  of  what  was  felt  to  be  the  aggres- 
sions of  the  pro-slavery  element.  Like  a  knowing 
antagonist  Lincoln  attacked  Douglas  at  his  most 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  129 

vulnerable  point,  assailing  his  record  in  connection 
with  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and 
the  passage  of  the  Nebraska  Bill.  Douglas,  skill- 
ful sophist  that  he  was,  dodged  and  attempted  to 
parry  this  blow  by  thrusting  certain  well-directed 
questions  at  Lincoln.  Whereupon  Lincoln  became 
interrogatory  himself  and  asked  Douglas  one 
question  which  destroyed  Douglas,  split  Douglas's 
party  in  twain,  and  drew  the  issue  squarely  between 
the  opposing  forces  of  the  entire  country.  He 
asked  Douglas  a  question  which,  if  answered  in  the 
affirmative,  would  offend  the  South,  and  which,  if 
answered  in  the  negative,  would  offend  Illinois. 
Douglas  wanted  the  immediate  senatorship  from 
Illinois,  so  he  answered  in  the  affirmative  and 
gained  the  senatorship,  but  he  offended  the  South 
and  lost  their  support  for  the  presidency  two  years 
later — just  as  Lincoln  had  calculated.  The  famous 
question  was —  "Can  the  people  of  a  Territory,  in 
a  lawful  way,  against  the  wish  of  any  citizen  of  the 
United  States,  exclude  slavery  from  that  Terri- 
tory, prior  to  its  adoption  of  a  State  Constitution?" 
Douglas  was  re-elected  to  the  senatorship  by  the 
state  legislature,  but  Lincoln  was  from  that  day 
the  chosen  man  of  the  people  of  Illinois.  In  a 
parade  prior  to  one  of  the  debates  the  Douglas 
men  had  carried  an  inscription  which  read,  "The 
Little  Giant,"  and  the  Lincoln  men  carried  an 
inscription  which  read,  "Lincoln  the  Giant  Killer." 
Douglas  had  traveled  on  special  trains,  waving 
banners  and  beating  drums;  Lincoln  had  jour- 
neyed in  the  simplicity  of  the  most  undistinguished 


I30  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

citizen.  Douglas  had  spent  $80,000  in  his  canvass ; 
Lincoln  had  spent  less  than  $1,000.  Lincoln  had 
lost  and  Douglas  had  won;  Douglas  had  grown 
weak,  and  Lincoln  had  grown  strong. 

Lincoln  was  now  in  the  eye  of  the  country  and 
was  invited  to  lecture  in  the  East,  which  he  did  so 
acceptably  as  to  utterly  astonish  all  the  bigots  of 
New  York  and  New  England,  who  had  not  be- 
lieved that  anything  very  remarkable  could  come 
out  of  the  West.  Horace  Greely  and  others  who 
did  not  like  Seward,  began  to  see  in  Lincoln  a 
"presidential  possibility."  In  i860  he  was  nomi- 
nated and  elected  by  the  RepubHcan  party,  the 
first  Chief  Executive  to  come  out  of  the  great 
North-West. 

So  slow  is  the  world  to  believe,  that  even  then 
there  was  scarcely  anybody  who  thought  Lincoln 
really  competent  to  fill  the  office  and  accomplish 
the  task  before  him.  Six  states  had  seceded  before 
he  could  be  inaugurated.  The  South  was  very 
angry.  The  Union  was  actually  going  to  pieces. 
Europe  was  laughing  and  acting  with  the  airs  of 
one  who  feels  like  shouting :  "I  told  you  so  !"  And 
the  greater  sentiment  in  the  North  at  this  time 
seemed  disposed  to  let  the  States  secede  without 
war;  men  were  not  inclined  to  fight,  they  were  too 
busy  in  their  shops  and  factories — -they  had  no 
time  to  measure  the  world-wide,  age-long  conse- 
quences of  the  destruction  of  the  greatest  republic 
in  the  world.  Men  poked  fun  at  the  new  president 
as  an  ordinary  Western  lawyer  with  no  executive 
ability.    Cartoonists  vied  with  one  another  In  carl- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  131 

caturing  his  homely  looks,  exaggerating  the  long- 
ness  of  his  arms  and  legs,  and  size  of  his  feet  and 
the  thickness  of  his  lips.  He  was  represented  as 
subhuman,  as  a  gorilla,  some  even  charging  him 
with  the  very  heinous  offence  of  being  part  "nig- 
ger." All  this  he  bore  with  the  steadfastness  and 
courage  of  a  man  who  knows  himself.  He  never 
swerved  from  his  position  that  the  Union  must  be 
preserved,  adding  an  element  to  our  statesmanship 
by  showing  that  the  first  and  foremost  duty  of  a 
government  is  to  defend  its  own  existence,  and  that 
the  right  to  do  this  is  inherent  in  the  nature  of 
government  and  does  not  have  to  be  conceded  to  it 
among  any  delegated  powers.  If  the  government 
had,  in  any  way  whatsoever,  either  by  grant  or 
conquest,  acquired  the  right  to  exist,  that  very 
right  carried  with  it  the  duty  of  self  preservation. 
On  the  question  of  slavery  he  was  not  an  Aboli- 
tionist, by  politics  at  least.  It  was  his  expressed 
wish  that  all  men  everywhere  might  be  free,  but  as 
President  of  the  United  States  he  was  not  an  offi- 
cer of  the  Abolition  Societies,  but  the  chief  execu- 
tive of  the  American  government  under  the  Con- 
stitution— and  the  Constitution  protected  slavery. 
So,  whatever  were  his  private  feelings  on  the  ques- 
tion, he  intended  to  sacrifice  them  to  his  solemn 
oath  to  defend  the  Constitution.  He  enforced  the 
"fugitive  slave  law"  and  in  his  inaugural  he  had 
renounced  any  intention  to  interfere  with  slavery 
where  it  already  existed  legally.  But  he  was  against 
its  further  extension,  and  upon  this  he  said  he 
would  "hold  firm  as  a  chain  of  steel." 


132  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

So  while  the  South  was  fast  uniting  and  prepar- 
ing for  war,  the  North  was  rather  undecided  and 
hesitant,  but  the  guns  of  Sumter,  which  were 
heard  around  the  world  and  whose  echo  shall  re- 
sound through  all  the  future  history  of  a  great 
nation,  did  what  neither  Lincoln  nor  danger  from 
the  South  nor  a  mere  latent  love  for  the  Union 
could  do — they  absolutely  united  the  North.  Dem- 
ocrats and  Republicans,  the  followers  of  Douglas 
and  the  followers  of  Lincoln,  became  of  one  mind 
to  settle  the  question  of  the  perpetuity  of  the 
Union;  all  Northern  parties  became  one  party, 
which  might  be  denominated  the  War  Party.  A 
call  for  seventy-five  thousand  was  answered  by  the 
willing  voices  of  a  million,  and  Massachusetts  had 
a  regiment  on  the  way  to  Washington  within  48 
hours  after  the  call. 

Here  again  comes  out  the  chief  element  of  his 
statesmanship:  he  did  not  call  until  he  knew  that 
men  were  ready,  and  even  anxious  to  come.  If  he 
had  called  for  troops  as  soon  as  he  was  inaugu- 
rated, he  would  probably  have  received  much  the 
same  reply  as  when  he  gave  his  first  orders  to  the 
Black  Hawk  volunteers.  "My  policy  Is  to  have 
no  policy,"  said  he;  he  waited  upon  events  and 
acted  according  to  the  great  heart  and  the  great 
will  of  the  people.  "Time  was  his  prime  minister." 
After  deciding  upon  a  course  of  action  he  never 
outran  the  opportunity:  he  made  every  effort  con- 
sistent with  the  authority  of  government  to  win 
conciliation,  but  he  called  for  troops  when  men 
were  ready  to  fight;  he  revoked  the  emancipation 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  133 

orders  of  his  too  hasty  generals,  but  In  response 
to  the  popular  demand  he  issued  his  Emancipation 
Proclamation  upon  the  heels  of  a  Federal  victory; 
he  returned  fugitive  slaves,  but  when  the  Northern 
soldiers  had  become  so  weary  as  to  be  glad  for 
anybody  to  help  to  do  the  fighting,  he  called  for 
the  black  legions,  whose  appearance  marked  the 
turning  point  of  the  War. 

And  the  guns  of  Sumter  had  no  less  effect  upon 
the  men  of  the  South.  Eleven  seceded  States 
formed  themselves  into  a  Confederacy.  The  bor- 
der States  of  Missouri,  Kentucky  and  Maryland 
were  with  difficulty  kept  in  the  Union,  and  such 
was  the  volcanic  nature  of  the  cleavage  that  the 
State  of  Virginia  was  finally  divided  against  itself. 
Lincoln  at  once  reaHzed  the  strategic  situation  of 
the  border  states,  and  with  the  instincts  of  the 
great  strategist  that  he  was,  he  concentrated  his 
first  efforts  upon  their  retention.  So  important 
was  the  task  and  so  earnestly  did  Lincoln  apply 
himself  to  It  that  some  observer  said:  "Lincoln 
would  Hke  to  have  God  on  his  side,  but  he  must 
have  Kentucky." 

The  line  of  cleavage  did  not  limit  itself  to  terri- 
tory, but  reached  into  the  administrative  branches 
of  the  government,  into  the  army  and  into  the 
navy.  One-third  of  the  officers,  because  of  South- 
ern lineage  or  Southern  sympathies,  left  the  regu- 
lar naval  and  military  forces  of  the  Union.  Among 
those  who  deserted  the  government  was  one  of  the 
ablest  captains  of  history,  Robert  E.  Lee.  Many 
Southern  men,  however,  preferred  to  stand  by  the 


134  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Government,  notably  among  whom  were  Senator 
Andrew  Johnson,  Generals  Scott  and  Thomas,  and 
Commodore  Farragut.  And  It  is  to  be  said  of  the 
common  soldier  and  sailor  that  not  one  of  them 
deserted  his  post  before  actual  war. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  right  here  consider  the 
relation  of  slavery  to  the  dreadful  war  that  was 
waged.  Some  say  that  slavery  brought  on  the  war, 
and  others  say  that  the  war  was  not  waged  in  the 
interest  of  slavery.  Slavery  was  not  the  immediate 
cause,  the  immediate  "bone  of  contention,"  but 
slavery  was  the  underlying  cause,  the  cause  of  the 
cause  of  the  war.  We  can  best  explain  by  a  para- 
ble. There  are  two  neighbors  living  with  no 
fence  between  them  and  no  definite  boundary  line. 
One  of  those  neighbors  has  a  bad  dog  which  the 
other  does  not  like.  They  often  quarrel  about  this 
dog.  The  one  thinks  that  he  has  a  right  to  keep 
him  and  let  him  run  free ;  the  other  thinks  that  his 
neighbor  has  no  right  to  keep  that  dog,  or  that, 
if  he  will  keep  him,  he  should  keep  him  tied  or 
in  a  kennel.  Finally  one  of  the  neighbors  decides 
to  rid  himself  of  the  other  neighbor  by  building  a 
dividing  fence.  A  fight  grows  out  of  their  dispute 
about  the  right  to  build  and  the  place  to  locate  the 
fence.  They  are  fighting  about  the  fence.  But  it 
is  not  hard  to  see  the  relation  of  the  dog  to  this 
fence.  Well,  slavery  was  the  dog  of  the  Civil 
War.    Secession  was  the  fence. 

During  the  war  there  was  a  popular  rhyme  that 
ran  thus: 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  135 

"In  sixty-one,  the  war  begun; 
In  sixty-two,  we'll  put  it  thru ; 
In  sixty-three,  the  nigger'll  be  free ; 
In  sixty-four,  the  war'll  be  o'er — 
And  Johnny  come  marching  home." 

The  prophecy  of  this  popular  doggerel  was 
fulfilled,  almost  to  the  letter.  In  1861,  in  spite 
of  the  president's  protestations  of  non-interfer- 
ence with  slavery,  war  could  not  be  averted.  For 
the  question  had  shifted  from  a  question  about 
the  dog  to  a  dispute  about  the  fence.  The  price 
which  the  South  demanded  for  peace  ;was  no 
longer  slavery  but  secession.  This  price  the  gov- 
ernment would  not  pay.  The  spirit  of  war  was 
full  grown;  the  gaiidium  certaminis  swept  the 
whole  manhood  of  the  nation  toward  the  front. 
The  first  great  shock  at  Bull  Run  resulted  in  a 
Northern  defeat;  which  perhaps  did  more  good 
for  the  North  than  it  did  for  the  South,  for  it 
filled  the  South  with  confidence,  but  it  filled  the 
North  with  caution.  In  "sixty-two"  the  war 
was  Hterally  "put  thru,"  and  from  the  summer  of 
this  year  till  the  appearance  of  black  troops  the 
outlook  was  very  dark  for  the  Union  cause.  In 
"sixty-three"  came  freedom  and  the  Negro  soldier, 
at  the  turning  point  of  the  war.  The  great  com- 
mander thus  brought  up  his  black  reserves  just 
in  time  to  strike  the  decisive  blow.  Lincoln  had 
the  felicity  of  doing  the  right  thing  at  the  right 
time.  Negro  troops  would  not  have  been  wel- 
comed by  the  Northern  soldier  before  this  time, 


136  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

and  even  now  Lincoln  found  it  hard  to  get  the 
Negroes  into  the  government  uniform;  the  white 
soldier  wanted  the  Negroes  to  be  dressed  in  a 
different  color  and  sort  of  suit  from  his  own. 
But  the  Union's  need  of  the  Negro  overcame  this 
prejudice.  The  Emancipation  Proclamation  was 
just  in  time,  too — just  in  time  to  make  the  masses 
of  foreign  nations  sympathize  with  the  Northern 
side  of  the  struggle,  as  being  a  struggle  for  free- 
dom as  well  as  for  Union.  If  issued  earlier,  it 
would  have  been  indeed  a  "Pope's  bull  against  the 
comet."  In  "sixty-four"  the  war  was  practically 
over;  even  the  Confederates  had  the  feeling  that 
it  was  simply  a  question  of  time  and  a  question  of 
terms.  Lincoln  steadfastly  refused  to  consider  any 
terms  but  the  restoration  of  the  Union  and  the 
authority  of  the  government. 

Through  it  all  Lincoln  had  been  prosecuting  the 
war  with  the  energy  of  an  experienced  commander- 
in-chief.  He  had  been  sifting  and  shifting  gen- 
erals until  he  had  finally  brought  out  Grant.  Pope, 
McClellan,  Burnside,  Hooker,  had  all  gone  be- 
fore. Some  of  them  were  energetic  and  aggressive, 
but  none  of  them  could  be  a  match  for  the  genius 
of  the  Confederate  captain,  Lee.  McClellan  was 
a  great  organizer  but  lacked  the  abiUty  for  ener- 
getic command  in  the  field.  So  hesitant  and  un- 
aggressive was  he  that  during  his  command  there 
came  into  existence  the  famous  phrase,  "All  is 
quiet  on  the  Potomac."  Somebody  praised  Mc- 
Clellan for  being  a  great  "engineer";  Lincoln  said 
yes,  but  that  he  seemed  to  have  a  special  talent  for 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  137 

developing  a  "stationary"  engine.  It  is  a  remark- 
able thing  to  say  of  a  man  who  was  a  civilian  about 
all  of  his  life,  but  Lincoln  was  a  better  strategist, 
excepting  perhaps  Grant,  than  any  general  that 
ever  came  to  the  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Po- 
tomac. By  observation  and  study  and  sympathy, 
he  learned  more  of  the  art  of  war  than  did  his 
generals  in  the  field.  He  warned  Hooker  not  to 
have  his  army  crossing  the  Rappahannock  River  in 
the  presence  of  Lee,  saying  that  Hooker's  army 
would  then  be  "like  an  ox  jumped  half  over  a  fence 
and  liable  to  be  torn  by  the  dogs  front  and  rear, 
without  a  fair  chance  to  gore  one  way  or  kick  the 
other."  He  noted  every  detail  in  the  movements 
of  armies;  he  saw  every  opportunity  to  strike  a 
deciding  blow.  Had  he  been  in  McClellan's  shoes 
after  Antietam,  he  would  have  injured  Lee.  Had 
he  been  in  Meade's  shoes  after  Gettysburg,  he 
might  have  crushed  Lee.  He  kept  telling  his  com- 
manders that  the  objective  of  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  should  be  Lee's  army  and  not  Richmond. 
And  when  Grant  came  to  command  in  the  East  he 
adopted  the  exact  hnes  of  tactics  which  Lincoln 
had  been  endeavoring  to  urge  upon  his  other  gen- 
erals; and  Grant's  success  attests  the  military  sense 
of  Lincoln. 

In  his  relations  with  his  cabinet  and  other  public 
officials  his  justness  and  patriotism  are  plainly 
shown.  He  chose  the  members  of  his  cabinet  with 
a  view  to  their  fitness  for  serving  the  country,  re- 
gardless of  other  considerations;  he  chose  Chase, 
who  was  thinking  that  the  country  had  made  a 


138  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

great  mistake  In  electing  Lincoln  to  the  presidency 
instead  of  him;  he  chose  Seward,  who  thought  that 
he  knew  much  more  about  the  presidential  office 
than  the  inexperienced  Illinois  lawyer,  and  was  not 
kind  enough  to  hide  his  opinion  even  from  Lincoln 
himself;  he  chose  Stanton,  a  Democrat,  who  had 
personally  insulted  Lincoln  as  a  lawyer  a  few  years 
before,  who  had  despised  Lincoln  the  President  as 
a  frivolous  story-teller,  and  from  whom  the  presi- 
dent had  sometimes  to  compel  subordination.  It 
is  a  marvellous  record  of  tact  and  patriotic  devo- 
tion how  he  harmonized  and  ruled  these  conflicting 
and  contending  spirits;  how  he  remained  both 
master  and  friend. 

But  be  it  said  to  the  undying  honor  of  all  these 
men  that  they  were  devoted  to  their  country  and 
rendered  invaluable  service  in  her  defense.  Espe- 
cially Stanton:  he  was  a  tyrant  and  a  relentless 
prosecutor, — and  that  Is  well,  for  he  was  a  good 
check  upon  the  over-mercifulness  of  Lincoln. 
These  two  characters  complemented  each  other  in 
the  great  task  of  the  administration :  Stanton  was 
the  grim,  relentless  Mars,  the  god  of  war,  caring 
more  for  the  business  than  either  for  the  sorrow 
or  for  the  joy  of  battle;  while  Lincoln  was  the 
superior  divinity,  unlimited  in  power  but  preferring 
mercy  to  justice,  and  restraining  with  patient  but 
authoritative  hand,  the  too  furious  course  of  the 
subordinate  war-god.  He  sometimes  referred  to 
Stanton  as  "Old  Mars  over  there  at  the  war  de- 
partment." 

Lincoln  also  had  many  puny  but  pestiferous 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  139 

politicians  on  his  hands.  When  asked  how  he 
managed  these,  he  told  the  story  of  an  old  farmer 
who  was  a  neighbor  of  theirs  when  he  was  a  boy. 
When  this  old  farmer  was  asked  how  he  got  rid  of 
a  bothersome  log  that  lay  in  his  field,  he  replied: 
"I  jes'  ploughed  around  it!" 

This  great  man  also  found  it  often  necessary  to 
"plough  around"  the  disaffection  or  the  apathy  of 
the  "plain  people,"  in  whom  he  had  such  noble  con- 
fidence. This  is  not  better  seen  anywhere  than  in 
his  relation  to  the  slavery  question.  On  this  ques- 
tion he  was  too  slow  for  some  and  too  fast  for 
others;  he  was  too  cold  for  the  Abolitionists  and 
too  hot  for  the  pro-slavery  faction.  It  is  the  lot 
of  a  great,  level,  even,  balanced  man  like  Lincoln 
to  be  censured  by  both  extremists.  So  normal  was 
he  that  we  find  different  persons  applying  exactly 
opposite  epithets  to  him:  some  say  that  he  was  too 
radical,  others  that  he  was  too  conservative;  some 
that  he  was  too  partisan,  others  that  he  was  too 
liberal;  some  that  he  was  extremely  democratic, 
others  that  he  was  a  tyrant;  some  say  that  he  was 
too  subject  to  sentiment,  others  that  he  was  as 
feelingless  as  a  stone ;  while  his  friends  were  charg- 
ing him  with  being  too  lenient  and  too  merciful  to 
the  enemy,  the  enemy  was  painting  him  as  the  in- 
carnation of  devilish  malice.  So  it  is  not  surprising 
that  while  some  say  that  the  whole  purpose  of  his 
war  and  administration  was  to  free  and  elevate 
the  Negroes,  others  declare  that  he  would  never 
have  issued  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  if  he 
had  not  been  compelled  to  do  so.    The  true  posi- 


I40  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

tlon  of  Lincoln  Is  to  be  found  about  half  way  be- 
tween all  of  these  extremes.  Personally  he  de- 
spised slavery.  But  as  President  of  the  United 
States  he  had  sense  enough  to  see  that  it  was  his 
duty  to  look  out  for  the  interests  of  the  govern- 
ment, because  the  Negroes  and  all  others  would  be 
lost  without  the  government.  He  would  interfere 
with  slavery  only  when  such  interference  was  some- 
how connected  with  the  welfare  of  the  Union;  he 
would  save  the  Union  either  with  or  without 
slavery.  What  he  did  for  black  men,  he  did  be- 
cause he  saw  that  it  was  good  for  all  men,  white 
and  black.  Said  he:  "In  giving  freedom  to  the 
slave,  we  assure  freedom  to  the  free — honorable 
alike  In  what  we  give  and  what  we  preserve." 

He  was  perfectly  clear  as  to  his  personal  inchna- 
tlon,  saying:  "If  slavery  is  not  wrong,  nothing 
is  wrong."  He  hated  slavery  most  because  of  its 
demoralizing  effect  upon  white  men;  because  it 
compelled  white  men  to  engage  in  too  many  sham 
arguments  In  their  efforts  to  defend  it;  because  it 
often  made  them  attack  the  very  foundation  of 
human  liberty;  because  it  made  them  attack  even 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  He  issued  his 
proclamation  of  freedom  deliberately  and  without 
compulsion,  because  he  saw  it  would  be  a  winning 
card  in  the  great  game  of  war  which  he  was  playing 
for  the  prize  of  a  united  country.  There  is  no  doubt 
about  his  estimation  of  the  act;  he  called  it  "the 
central  act  of  my  administration  and  the  great 
event  of  the  19th  century."  He  also  said:  "It  is 
a  momentous  thing  to  be  the  instrument  under 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  141 

Providence  of  the  liberation  of  a  race,"  and  "If  my 
name  ever  goes  into  history  it  will  be  for  this  act." 
The  most  valuable  posession  of  all  that  he  has  left 
us  on  this  question  of  the  Negro  is  his  willingness 
to  learn  and  change  his  mind;  he  at  first  thought 
that  the  Negro  soldiers  would  not  fight;  but  when 
they  fought,  he  acknowledged  it;  once  he  thought 
that  only  white  men  should  vote,  but  later  he  ac- 
knowledged that  to  say  that  self-government  is 
right  and  to  say  also  that  for  one  race  to  govern 
another  against  its  wish  and  without  its  co-opera- 
tion is  likewise  right,  are  as  opposite  "as  God  and 
Mammon." 

By  1 865  he  had  overcome  opposition  in  America 
and  had  outhved  the  sneers  of  Europe,  and  was 
the  most  powerful  man  in  the  world.  His  favorite 
general,  Grant,  by  literally  battering  the  Con- 
federate army  and  pounding  the  defenses  of  Rich- 
mond, with  repeated  strokes  like  the  blows  of 
Thor's  hammer,  had  finally  opened  the  gates  of 
Richmond  and  compelled  the  retreat  of  the  out- 
numbered and  outdone,  but  not  outgeneralled, 
Lee.  Lincoln  had  entered  Richmond,  not  as  the 
conqueror  enters  the  fallen  stronghold  of  the 
enemy,  but  as  the  sympathetic  man  enters  the  scene 
of  the  common  scourge  of  his  country.  The 
Negro  troops  who  were  among  the  first  to  enter 
Richmond,  fed  and  watered  the  starving  Con- 
federates from  their  canteens  and  acted  more  like 
a  rescue  party  after  an  earthquake  than  a  victo- 
rious army  after  a  stubborn  siege.  On  the  9th  of 
April  Lee  surrendered  an  army  of  the  most  nervy 


142  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

and  long-suffering  soldiers  that  had  ever  followed 
an  Anglo-Saxon  captain.  On  April  the  14th,  after 
a  long  season  of  the  clouds  and  thunders  and  indis- 
criminating  fires  of  war,  glad  for  the  returning 
sunshine  of  peace,  filled  with  the  milk  of  human 
kindness,  and  with  the  tenderest  feelings  of  merci- 
fulness and  pardon,  the  Great  President  was  slain 
by  the  bullet  of  a  misguided  zealot.  The  foolish 
man  expected  some  men  to  praise  him  for  the  deed, 
but  the  whole  world  abhorred  him,  hunted  him, 
and  killed  him  like  a  dog.  Grant,  himself  a  man 
without  the  passion  of  hate,  said  of  Lincoln:  "In 
his  death  the  nation  lost  its  greatest  hero;  in  his 
death  the  South  lost  its  most  just  friend."  At  the 
funeral,  immediately  behind  his  coflUn,  marched  a 
detachment  of  the  troops  of  the  race  he  had 
emancipated. 

He  was  buried  in  Springfield,  III.,  which  had  so 
long  been  his  home.  No  one  knew  his  birthplace, 
but  the  whole  world  knows  his  grave.  At  his 
death  he  was  just  fairly  entered  upon  a  second 
presidential  term.  Lowell  calls  him  "the  first 
American."  He  was  the  first  president  of  the  Re- 
public who  was  American  through  and  through. 
There  was  not  one  foreign  element  in  his  bringing 
up ;  he  was  an  unmixed  child  of  the  Western  plains, 
born  in  the  South,  reared  in  the  North.  Most  of 
the  presidents  before  him  being  reared  nearer  the 
Atlantic,  had  imbibed  more  or  less  of  Eastern  cul- 
ture and  had  European  airs.  This  man  Lincoln 
M^as  so  thoroughly  democratic  as  to  astonish  both 
Old  and  New  England.     He  never  acted  "the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  143 

President,"  and  was  always  a  man  among  men, 
the  honored  servant  of  the  people. 

From  a  five  dollar  fee  before  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  he  had  risen  to  a  five  thousand  dollar  fee 
before  the  supreme  court  of  Illinois.  From  a 
study  of  "Dilworth's  Spelling  Book"  in  his  seventh 
year,  he  had  risen  to  write,  in  his  fifty-seventh 
year,  his  second  Inaugural,  which  is  the  greatest 
utterance  of  man  and  yet  all  of  his  days  in  school 
added  together,  are  less  than  one  year.  His 
pioneer  life  had  given  him  a  vein  of  humor  which 
became  his  "Life-preserver"  in  times  of  stress; 
it  had  also  given  him  a  love  for  human  liberty 
that  was  unaffected.  He  felt  that  the  enslave- 
ment of  some  men  was  but  the  advance  guard,  the 
miner  and  sapper,  of  the  enslavement  of  all  men. 
He  respected,  even  revered,  the  Constitution  of 
his  country,  but  he  would  violate  a  clause  in  order 
to  save  the  whole  instrument — just  as  a  good 
surgeon  will  amputate  a  limb  to  save  a  life. 
From  a  poor  captain  of  volunteers  in  the  scan- 
dalous little  Black  Hawk  War,  where  he  jokingly 
said  he  "bled,  died,  and  came  away,"  although 
he  never  had  a  skirmish  nor  saw  an  Indian,  he 
had  risen  to  the  chief  command  in  a  war  that  num- 
bered three  thousand  battles  and  skirmishes  and 
cost  three  billion  dollars.  Having  no  ancestry 
himself,  being  able  to  trace  his  line  by  rumor  and 
tradition  only  as  far  back  as  his  grandfather,  he 
became,  like  George  Washington,  the  Father  of 
his  Country.  Born  of  a  father  who  could  not 
write  his  name,  he  himself  had  written  the  Proc- 


144  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

lamatlon  of  Emancipation,  the  fourth  great  state 
paper  in  the  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race, — 
the  others  being  Magna  Charta,  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  the  Constitution.  If  we  accept 
the  statement  of  Cicero  that  the  days  on  which  we 
are  saved  should  be  as  illustrious  as  the  days  on 
which  we  are  born,  then  Lincoln  the  Savior  must 
always  remain  co-ordinate  with  Washington,  the 
Father  of  his  country.  Jackson  was  "Old 
Hickory,"  Taylor  was  "Old  Rough,"  and  there 
have  been  various  names  given  to  the  other  presi- 
dents, but  Washington  and  Lincoln  were  the  only 
ones  whom  the  American  people  styled  "Father." 

Nature  tried  herself  in  the  year  of  1809; 
many  great  and  varied  geniuses  Vv^ere  born. 
Charles  Darwin  and  Abraham  Lincoln  were  born 
on  the  same  day,  one  to  the  mastery  of  nature, 
and  the  other  to  the  mastery  of  men;  both  circum- 
polar  stars  that  never  set. 

European  people  could  not  understand  how  a 
man  like  Lincoln,  who  was  born  what  they  call 
a  peasant  in  Europe,  could  wear  supreme  power 
as  lightly  as  Lincoln  wore  his.  Thev  had  been 
used  to  Cromwells  and  Napoleons,  who  rose  to 
rule  and  not  to  obey,  to  enslave  and  not  to  free, 
the  people.  A  Frenchman  could  not  understand 
why  n  ruler  like  Lincoln,  in  command  of  a  million 
armed  men,  would  ieonardize  his  tenure  of  office 
bv  holding  a  presidential  election  in  1864.  A 
European  might  have  declared  the  whole  Consti- 
tution suspended  and  himself  Dictator  during  the 
remainder  of  the  war.     But  the  Republican  form 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  145 

of  government  was  more  respected  by  Lincoln  In 
time  of  war  than  by  some  other  presidents  in 
times  of  the  greatest  peace.  In  this  he  rendered 
a  great  service,  not  only  to  his  country  but  to  the 
whole  liberty-loving  world;  for  he  showed  the 
ability  of  a  Republic  to  save  itself  in  a  life  and 
death  grapple  without  abating  the  freedom  of  its 
citizenship.  After  his  death  the  French  Liberals 
sent  Mrs.  Lincoln  a  medal  to  the  honor  of  the  de- 
ceased president,  part  of  the  inscription  being: 
"Saved  the  Republic  without  veiling  the  Statue  of 
Liberty."  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the 
world  democracy  had  demonstrated  its  right  to 
a  place  of  respect  beside  the  more  ancient  form  of 
government. 

Again  it  is  to  the  everlasting  honor  of  the 
American  people  that  the  death  of  a  man  like 
Lincoln  in  a  time  like  Lincoln's  should  cause  such 
a  little  stir  and  no  revolution  in  the  government. 
The  vice-president,  a  man  who  did  not  possess  the 
entire  confidence  of  the  party  in  power,  was 
allowed  to  assume  the  office  of  president  without 
a  struggle.  And  it  is  a  marvel  of  patriotism,  of 
order  and  self-control,  that  an  army  of  a  million 
men,  who  held  within  their  hands  the  nation's 
fate,  should  march  down  Pennsylvania  Ave.,  in 
review  before  this  new  president,  lay  down  their 
victorious  arms,  and  return  to  the  fireside  and  to 
the  toil  of  factory  and  field.  It  was  a  sight  for 
the  gods,  the  demi-gods  and  the  crowned  heads 
of  the  ancient  world.  It  was  the  triumph  of 
democracy. 


146  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Child  of  the  American  soil,  cradled  and 
nursed  in  the  very  bosom  of  nature,  he  loved 
his  country  with  the  passion  with  which  most  men 
love  their  human  mothers.  He  could  not  bear  the 
thought  of  one  iota  of  detraction  from  her  honor, 
her  dignity  or  her  welfare.  Against  her  dis- 
memberment he  was  willing  to  fight  to  the  end  of 
his  second  administration  or  till  the  end  of  time. 
He  might  tolerate  anything  else  except  disunion, — 
even  the  right  of  some  of  his  fellowmen  to  enslave 
others.  Of  every  concession  which  he  made  dur- 
ing his  administration,  to  friend  or  foe,  the  sine  qua 
non  was  Union.  A  house  divided  against  itself 
cannot  stand.  In  this  he  left  us  a  great  heritage ; 
it  is  a  lesson  for  both  sections,  and  all  races  of  any 
section.  White  men  of  America,  black  men  of 
America,  by  the  eternal  God  of  heaven, 
there  can  be  no  division  of  destiny  on  the 
same  soil  and  in  the  bosom  and  in  the  lap  of  the 
same  natural  mother.  Men  may  attempt 
and  accomplish  discrimination  in  a  small  way,  but 
Almighty  God  and  all-mothering  nature  are  abso- 
lutely impartial.  They  have  woven  the  fabric  of 
life  so  that  the  thread  of  each  man's  existence 
is  a  part  of  the  whole.  He  who  sets  fire  to  his 
neighbor's  house,  endangers  the  existence  of  his 
own;  he  who  degrades  his  neighbor's  children, 
undermines  the  future  of  his  own.  Together  we 
rise  and  together  we  fall  is  the  plan  of  God  and  the 
rule  of  nature.  We  must  lean  together  in  the 
common  struggle  of  life:  the  syncline  is  stronger 
than  the   anticline. — In  a  great  nation  with  an 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  147 

increasing  fame,  the  lesson  of  Lincoln's  life  must 
grow  in  importance.  Long  as  the  human  heart 
loves  freedom  his  name  will  be  a  word  on  the 
tongues  of  men.  His  name  will  be  a  watchword 
wherever  liberty  in  her  struggles  with  tyranny, 
lifts  her  embattled  banners.  No  man  of  the  an- 
cient or  the  modern  world  has  a  securer  place  in 
the  hearts  and  memories  of  men  than  this  man 
Lincoln,  who  was  born  in  obscurity,  who  died 
in  a  halo,  and  who  now  rests  in  an  aureole  of 
historic  glory. 


INDUSTRY 

For  over  three  hundred  years  the  "lazy"  Negro 
has  done  the  hardest  work  in  America.  Theoreti- 
cally freedom  would  keep  any  lazy  being  from 
work, — that  is,  freedom  from  chains  and  the  whip. 
The  Negro  was  expected  to  almost  die  of  starva- 
tion rather  than  work  in  a  state  of  freedom.  But 
to-day  out  of  seven  million  colored  people  above 
the  age  of  ten  years,  five  million  are  at  work, — 
two  million  women  and  three  million  men.  They 
are  still  doing  the  hardest  work  in  America :  farm- 
ing, gardening,  dairying,  fishing,  mining,  milling, 
and  all  sorts  of  domestic  and  personal  service. 
There  are  nearly  a  million  Negro  farmers  and 
two  million  farm  laborers ;  a  million  Negro  women 
are  working  on  the  farms. 

In  the  main  the  Negro  is  doing  the  work  which 
the  white  people  wish  most  to  shun.  In  slavery 
he  did  the  drudgery  under  compulsion,  and  the 
white  man  naturally  reasoned  that  the  Negro 
would  escape  from  such  work  at  all  costs  as  soon 
as  he  was  set  free.  On  the  other  hand  the  Negro 
took  advantage  of  the  hard  lessons  he  had  learned 
in  slavery  and  began  to  lay  his  economic  founda- 
tion deep  and  firm  in  all  the  avenues  of  hard 
work  to  which  he  was  admitted.  He  had  worked 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  for  board  and  clothes, 

148 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  149 

and  very  poor  board  and  clothes  at  that.     He 
is  the  one  element  in  America  to  whom  America 
owes  a  large  past  debt,  never  to  be  paid  and  per- 
haps absolutely  unpayable.     The  African  Negro) 
was  the  forerunner  of  American  civihzation  in( 
the  South;  he  was  the  army  which  attacked  the' 
forests,   the   canebrakes  and  the   swamps. 

Instead  of  taking  his  freedom  as  a  good  op- 
portunity to  quit  work  and  starve  to  death,  he 
has  become  such  a  competitor  to  those  about  him 
that  every  possible  effort  is  made  to  handicap  and 
check  him.  Only  menial  and  hard  work  have 
been  opened  willingly  to  him,  and  efforts  are 
being  made  in  some  places  to  push  him  out  of 
even  the  higher  forms  of  menial  service, — such 
as  hotel  waiters,  porters  and  barbers.  Under 
the  pressure  of  late  economic  conditions,  white 
men  have  become  more  and  more  willing  to  do 
such  work.  Twenty-five  years  ago  it  was  a  dis- 
grace to  a  white  man  to  be  seen  shaving  another 
white  man;  Booker  T.  Washington  said  that  the 
white  man  in  the  chair  did  not  feel  that  it  was  safe 
to  let  another  white  man  get  a  razor  under 
his  throat.  Many  Negro  men  on  the  other  hand 
got  really  wealthy  at  the  barber's  trade.  In  the 
South  white  men  have  lately  entered  into  sharp 
competition  against  colored  men  In  this  field, 
especially  in  the  larger  cities  and  In  connection 
with  the  hotels. 

Again,  the  Negro  worker  is  handicapped  by 
Inferior  sanitary  conditions  of  work,  as  a  rule.  In 
print  It  Is  merely  proclaimed  that  the  Negro  Is 


150  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

physically  unfit  and  Inferior  to  other  peoples,  but 
in  practice  it  is  taken  for  granted  that  the  Negro 
can  live  under  conditions  that  would  kill  a  white 
man.  It  always  seems  strange  to  me  that  anybody 
could  express  surprise  that  the  Negro's  death 
rate  is  higher  in  America  than  that  of  white  folk; 
and  it  seems  even  stupid  to  hear  some  ascribe  it 
to  the  Negro's  color  or  race  when  it  can  be  amply 
explained  by  the  unsanitary  conditions  of  his  life. 
The  house  which  the  landlord  or  employer  usually 
offers  to  the  Negro  tenant  or  workman,  is  usu- 
ally nothing  but  a  bare  shelter  for  the  animal, 
often  one  or  two  rooms  and  without  sufficient 
breathing  space  for  the  family.  All  modern  sani- 
tary arrangements  are  conspicuous  by  their  ab- 
sence, often  even  water  is  scarce.  The  great  army 
of  Negro  prisoners  in  the  South  Is  kept  under 
conditions  which  impregnate  them  with  diseases, 
and  when  their  terms  expire,  if  they  are  alive, 
they  are  sent  back  among  the  masses  of  colored 
people  to  scatter  these  diseases.  The  greater  part 
of  the  living  condition  of  Negroes  in  the  South 
is  in  the  hands  of  white  people,  but  the  general 
unsanitary  living  of  the  Negro  masses  and  the 
rate  at  which  they  die  are  often  held  up  as  the 
fault  of  the  Negroes  alone.  It  is  significant  that 
a  recent  publication  by  the  United  States  Census 
Bureau  shows  that  the  Negroes  live  better  and 
their  death-rate  decreases  in  proportion  as  they 
gain  posession  and  control  of  their  own  homes. 

Again,  the  Negro  laborer  is  practically  every- 
where underpaid.     It  is  said  that  his  standard  of 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  151 

living  is  lower.  It  is  forgotten  that  the  standard  of 
living  is  as  much  an  effect  as  a  cause ;  poverty  and 
low  wages  keep  down  the  standard  of  living.  Is  the 
Negro  expected  to  raise  his  standard  of  living 
before  his  wages  are  raised?  Great  organiza- 
tions of  white  men  have  gone  on  strike  to  compel 
the  employer  to  pay  the  Negro  workmen  lower 
wages  for  the  same  work  for  which  they  them- 
selves were  getting  a  higher  wage.  In  Georgia 
there  was  a  great  strike  of  the  white  railroad  men 
for  lower  wages — for  black  railroad  men.  It 
seems  to  us  that  this  will  ultimately  work  against 
the  interests  of  white  men,  for  if  soulless  cor- 
porations are  compelled  to  hire  colored  men  at 
lower  wages,  they  will  find  every  excuse  possible 
to  hire  more  of  the  cheaper  labor  and  less  of  the 
higher  labor. 

This  question  of  pay  reminds  us  that  it  is 
often  said  that  white  people  prefer  Negroes  for 
certain  forms  of  work  and  service:  colored  men 
for  porters,  butlers  and  house  "boys," —  and 
colored  women  for  cooks,  maids,  laundresses  and 
even  sick  nurses.  This  matter  of  pay  has  largely 
determined  that  preference.  The  Negroes  are 
not  preferred  because  they  are  black,  certainly. 
But  the  Negro  servant  can  be  had  for  lower 
wages,  or  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  he  will 
do  more  work  for  the  same  wages.  The  Negro 
trained  nurse  is  expected  to  be  the  chamber  maid 
also,  to  empty  the  slops  and  clean  the  room.  They 
have  even  been  required  to  serve  meals  to  the 
family.     If  a  white  woman  is  hired  as  cook,  she 


152  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

will  want  a  boy  to  bring  in  the  wood  and  draw 
water  from  the  well.  Or  what  amounts  to  the 
same  thing  still,  the  Negro  servant  will  work 
longer  hours  and  take  more  mistreatment  and 
accept  inferior  accommodations  from  the  em- 
ployer, not  because  the  Negro  prefers  these  con- 
ditons  but  because  of  his  disadvantages  in  the 
struggle  to  live  and  because  his  other  avenues  of 
employment  are  largely  limited  by  prejudice  and 
labor  unions.  In  short,  the  preference  for  a 
Negro  servant  or  workman  is  by  no  means  a  pre- 
ference for  the  Negro.  The  Negro  is  such  a 
large  competitor  in  some  fields,  like  mining  and 
smelting,  that  he  is  admitted  to  the  unions,  usually 
in  segregated  organizations,  however.  It  is  the 
general  practice  of  white  labor  unions  to  admit 
Negroes  wherever  it  is  vitally  necessary  to  protect 
the  interests  of  the  white  workingmen,  and  to 
exclude  the  Negro  whenever  his  membership 
would  benefit  the  Negro  alone. 

We  must  speak  of  the  perils  that  beset  the 
Negro  woman  and  child,  especially  as  domestic 
servants.  In  many  communities  we  have  found  the 
white  people  complaining  that  it  is  getting  harder 
and  harder  to  persuade  the  "lazy"  Negroes  to 
work  as  cooks,  house-servants,  washerwomen  and 
chamber  maids.  This  is  true,  all  except  the  ques- 
tion-begging word  "lazy."  The  reason  is  not 
laziness :  it  is  the  unprotected  condition  of  colored 
women  and  girls.  A  Negro  girl  has  little  enough 
protection  against  the  stranger  in  the  streets,  and 
when  she  goes  into  domestic  service  there  is  no 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  153 

protecting  law  that  follows  her;  she  is  entirely 
at  the  mercy  of  the  honor  of  the  white  male 
members  of  the  household,  and  bitter  experiences 
have  shown  that  in  many,  many  cases  that  cannot 
be  relied  upon.  Consequently,  whenever  a 
colored  man  can  earn  enough  to  barely  keep  his 
wife  and  daughters  at  home,  he  does  so.  The 
truth  about  the  rapacity  which  the  colored  female 
has  had  to  withstand  will  never  be  fully  told;  and 
if  told,  it  would  be  incredible  to  most  of  those 
who  had  not  first-hand  knowledge  of  conditions, 
if  one  white  female  were  outraged  by  a  black  man 
to  every  ten  black  females  that  are  outraged  by 
white  men  in  America,  the  ninety  millions  would 
start  a  war  of  extermination  against  the  ten  mil- 
lions. And  yet  the  Negro  is  the  one  who  has  been 
advertised  to  the  world  as  the  rapist.  What  a 
powerful  agent  the  associated  press  is !  It  can 
literally  make  black  white  and  white  black.  White 
men  own  and  operate  practically  the  whole  of  the 
free  press  in  this  country.  The  Negroes  with  a 
few  limited  weekly  and  monthly  sheets  dare  not 
speak  the  truth  on  this  subject. 

In  spite  of  these  hindrances  the  Negro  has  de- 
veloped a  large  industrial  class  and  some  business 
organizations.  The  colored  people  have  in  the 
main  worked  willingly  at  whatever  their  hands 
found  to  do.  Contrary  to  the  popular  impression, 
they  have  not  rushed  heedlessly  away  from  lower 
forms  of  employment  toward  higher  forms  before 
they  were  prepared  to  do  so.  Many  of  them  have 
left  the  farms,  but  not  nearly  in  so  large  a  propor- 


154  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

tlon  as  the  white  people  of  this  civihzation  have 
left  the  farms.  And  besides  the  Negro  had  not 
only  the  normal  industrial  development  but  also 
abnormal  conditions,  political,  civil  and  educa- 
tional to  drive  him  from  the  country. 

The  Negro  is  going  forward  also  in  business 
organizations,  especially  in  those  sections  where 
prejudice  is  most  unreasonable.  Race  prejudice 
is  responsible  for  many  a  Negro  drug  store  and 
other  merchant  businesses.  The  race  is  con- 
tinually trying  by  indirect  routes  to  get  around  the 
obstructions  that  are  put  into  its  pathway.  Some- 
times, as  in  the  case  of  these  business  enterprises, 
it  seems  to  reap  a  temporary  benefit  from  the 
very  fact  of  the  existence  of  the  obstruction. 
Therefore  even  some  Negroes  have  made  the 
mistake  of  crediting  race  prejudice  with  race 
prosperity, — which  is  about  as  logical  as  giving 
credit  to  war  for  general  prosperity  because  it 
temporarily  stimulates  the  iron  industry  and  raises 
the  price  of  shares  in  the  steel  corporation. 

In  the  South  as  a  whole,  it  is  a  fact,  to  be 
variously  explained  of  course,  but  it  still  is  a  fact 
that  the  Negro  laborer  is  preferred  and  that  the 
white  people  would  not  substitute  for  him  the 
laborer  of  any  other  race  in  the  world. 


EDUCATION. 

The  foundations  of  Negro  education  in  the 
South  were  fortunately  laid  by  generous  and  fair- 
minded  people  of  the  North  and  East,  through 
church  organizations  hke  the  Freedmen's  Aid 
Society,  the  American  Missionary  Association  and 
the  Baptist  Education  Society,  and  through  inde- 
pendent schools  like  Hampton  and  Tuskegee. 
Such  organizations  and  institutions  have  created 
leadership  for  the  race  and  made  the  education 
of  the  race  possible;  but  if  such  organizations 
and  schools  were  many  times  rnultiplied,  they 
could  not  educate  the  American  Negro.  That  can 
be  done  only  by  the  pubhc  school,  the  biggest 
university  of  them  all.  These  private  efforts  have 
created  a  leadership  and  made  the  pubhc  school 
possible,  but  the  pubhc  school  must  do  the  job  of 
educating  the  Negro.  As  a  rule  in  these  essays  we 
are  considering  the  Negro  in  his  relations  to  the 
body  politic,  rather  than  in  relation  to  any  private 
interests.  We  wish  to  speak  now  especially  of  his 
public  school  education. 

What  is  the  "public  school?"  For  it  seems  to 
be  a  prominent  and  permanent  part  of  modern 
education,  and  like  all  human  institutions  it  must 
have  had  a  beginning  and  a  sufficient  cause  for  its 
instituting.      We    speak    of    "the    public    school 


156  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

system,"  meaning  sometimes  the  machinery  of 
public  education,  but  often  alluding  to  the  type 
of  education  as  distinguished  from  that  of  sec- 
tarian and  private  schools.  The  Greeks  were 
the  first  to  develop  a  system  of  education  distinct 
from  theology  and  priestcraft,  and  they  recognized 
at  once  the  necessary  two  sides  of  a  complete 
system  in  mental  and  physical  training,  which  they 
termed  respectively  music  and  gymnastics.  But 
altho  the  Greek  and  the  later  Roman  systems 
recognized  these  two  sides,  still  the  Greek  ideal 
was  self-culture,  while  the  Roman  ideal  was  what 
we  would  call  self-sacrifice,  if  that  word  were  not 
too  specific  in  its  meaning,  and  so  we  will  call  it 
self-putting-forth  or  self-action.  The  Greek 
looked  upon  the  soul  and  wanted  an  ideal  man  of 
well-defined  principles  and  lofty  virtues, — and 
then  trusted  the  results  of  his  action.  The  Roman 
looked  out  upon  the  world  and  wanted  a  practi- 
cal man  of  efficiency  and  power  to  manage  that 
world, — and  trusted  the  fate  of  his  soul.  But 
no  system  of  education  is  complete  which  does 
not  consider  both, — the  ideal  and  the  opportune. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  there  had  grown  up  two 
educational  institutions,  the  monastery  and  the 
castle,  for  the  training  of  monks  and  knights,  and 
learning  was  the  jealously  guarded  privilege  of 
the  classes  until  Martin  Luther  did  for  education 
what  Socrates  is  said  to  have  done  for  philosophy, 
— brought  it  down  from  heaven  to  dwell  in  the 
huts  of  men.  Luther  contended  that  the  child  of 
the   humblest  peasant  was   entitled  to   the   best 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  157 

learning  that  his  country  could  afford.  That  was 
a  great  step  forward,  for  it  had  been  thought  that 
a  book  in  the  hand  of  the  peasant  would  not  be 
a  torch  but  a  firebrand. — But  still  this  did  not 
make  a  "public  school:"  it  meant  only  that  the 
peasant  should  not  be  forbidden;  it  was  not  yet 
the  "golden  rule"  of  education. 

And  thanks  to  the  genius  of  the  common  people, 
when  once  they  were  admitted  to  membership, 
education  got  closer  to  real  things  and  real  life. 
Teachers  began  to  develop  maxims  and  principles : 
"Teach  a  thing  first  and  then  the  reason  for  it," 
said  Ratke.  There  grew  up  a  co-operative  and 
mutually  helpful  companionship  between  theory 
and  practice,  learning  and  wisdom,  the  mother 
tongue  and  the  other  tongues.  But  there  was 
still  no  "public  school  system,"  except  that  the 
general  public  was  nominally  entitled  to  learn. 
Education  was  not  a  state  concern,  being  con- 
trolled not  by  the  statesman  but  by  the  priest  and 
the  pedagogue. 

This  was,  however,  a  good  foundation  and 
preparation  for  the  public  school.  With  the 
growth  of  knowledge  the  spirit  of  freedom  grew, 
and  the  spirit  of  freedom  is  the  creator  of  the 
public  school.  Be  it  remembered  to  the  honor  of 
America  that  she  was  the  first  to  reach  the  public 
school  stage ;  for  she  was  first  to  have  the  necessary 
cause, — universal  suffrage.  Universal  education 
is  as  necessary  to  popular  self-government  as  air 
is  to  life.  New  England  recognized  this  early  and 
established  the  "public  school,"  making  it  as  vital 


158  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

an  interest  of  the  community  as  war  and  real 
estate.  We  now  reach  what  I  choose  to  call  the 
"golden  rule"  of  education :  not  that  any  man  may 
be  schooled,  but  that  every  man  must  be  educated. 
Education  had  been  a  private  matter,  to  be  had 
or  done  without  according  to  the  means  or  fortune 
of  the  individual — like  an  automobile  or  a 
diamond  pin.  The  state  had  not  been  interested, 
but  when  manhood  suffrage  is  attempted,  either 
ignorance  or  intelligence  must  rule.  Democracy 
is  the  condition  of  the  public  school  and  the 
ballot  is  its  causa  essendi. 

At  present  all  civilized  nations,  whatever  their 
form  of  government,  are  interested  in  public  edu- 
cation. A  kingdom,  like  Prussia,  may  be  in  the 
front  rank.  Such  government  is  democratic  in 
spirit  tho  monarchic  in  theory.  And  the  late 
advent  of  the  public  school  into  the  Southern  part 
of  the  United  States  was  due  to  the  persistence 
of  slavery.  Under  the  slave  regime  the  state 
government  was  democratic  in  theory  but  oligar- 
chic in  spirit  and  in  fact.  This  explains,  too,  the 
comparatively  slow  development  of  our  Southern 
schools:  they  have  suffered  in  the  struggle  of 
democracy  against  oligarchy.  If  the  few  are  to 
rule,  what  is  the  need  of  universal  education? 
Besides,  the  rule  of  the  few  is  precarious  under 
even  the  rudiments  of  popular  instruction.  But 
we  have  advanced  somewhat  with  the  general  edu- 
cational advancement:  we  have  public  schools 
maintained  by  the  state  and  supported  by  public 
taxes;   and  public  lands  and  certain  fines  have 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  159 

been  diverted  to  school  purposes.  The  system 
has  grown  up  through  graded  school  and  high 
school  even  into  normal  school  and  university, 
so  that  it  is  possible  for  one  to  acquire  even  the 
highest  professional  training  under  non-sectarian, 
civil  authorities. 

And  how  has  the  Negro  fared  in  this  battle  of 
democracy  and  education  against  oligarchy  and 
ignorance?  He  has  been  the  objective  position  of 
much  of  the  fighting;  and  his  situation  has  been 
all  the  more  critical  because  the  forces  on  both 
sides  have  been  not  only  in  earnest  but  in  many 
cases  sincere, — some  believing  that  he  should  not 
be  admitted  to  full  membership  in  the  democracy 
and  therefore  not  to  the  fullest  education,  and 
others  believing  that  the  destiny  of  democracy 
and  education  and  even  of  Christianity  depends 
upon  their  ability  to  meet  the  challenge  of  the 
Negro  and  take  him  in.  All  the  prejudices  and 
passions  which  the  classes  have  always  had  against 
the  advance  of  the  masses  were  aggravated  and 
enhanced  against  the  ex-slave,  who  was  not  only  of 
a  different  class  but  of  a  different  race  and  even  of 
a  different  color.  This  badged  him  to  the  very  eye 
of  the  jealous  civilization  that  surrounded  him. 
His  color  had  been  the  mark  of  enslavement  and 
was  taken  to  be  also  the  mark  of  Inferiority;  for 
prejudice  does  not  reason,  or  it  would  not  be 
prejudice.  If,  for  example,  the  slaves  had  been 
white  but  only  five  feet  high,  for  generations 
afterward  there  would  have  been  in  this  country 
a  strong  prejudice  against  all  short  people.    This 


i6o  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

element  cannot  be  ignored  if  one  would  under- 
stand the  development  and  the  present  condtion 
of  Negro  education  in  the  public  and  largely  in  the 
private  schools  of  this  country. 

At  first  very  few  of  those  who  opposed  and 
not  many  of  those  who  favored  his  education 
believed  him  really  capable  of  much  education, 
and  so  the  debate  was  not  interesting.  As  time 
went  he  took  the  question  out  of  debate  by  demon- 
strating his  capacity,  and  the  opposition  became 
more  determined.  It  was  argued  that  the  Negro's 
educational  advancement  threatened  the  economic 
well-being  of  the  South,  that  what  this  section 
needed  was  an  unthinking  mass  of  common  labor- 
ers and  farm-hands, — not  artisians  and  farmers, 
mind  you,  but  laborers  and  farm-hands, — and  that 
education  was  spoiling  this  class.  But  it  has  been 
shown,  not  only  in  other  countries  like  England 
and  Prussia  where  the  people  are  educated,  but 
even  in  those  parts  of  the  South  where  the  Negro 
is  better  educated,  that  an  intelligent  workman 
is  better  than  a  laborer  and  an  intelligent,  self- 
directing  small-farmer  is  more  economical  to  the 
state  than  a  driven,  irresponsible  farm-hand.  Be- 
sides, the  more  intelligent  the  working  class,  the 
more  they  want, — better  shoes,  better  clothes, 
better  houses  and  more  comforts, — and  the  satis- 
fying of  these  wants  stimulates  trade  and  lifts 
the  general  level  of  living.  It  pushes  those  who 
are  up  further  up.  When  you  raise  the  bottom  of 
society  you  push  up  the  top,  you  do  not  overturn 
it.     In  a  democracy  individuals  will  naturally  find 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  i6i 

their  way  from  the  bottom  to  the  top,  and  in- 
ferior individuals  will  sink  from  the  top  toward 
the  bottom.  But  this  is  the  reason  for  democracy 
and  the  strongest  argument  in  its  favor;  and  there 
is  but  one  way  to  prevent  this,  and  that  is  to  have 
no  democracy. 

Some  say  that  the  education  of  the  Negro  tends 
p  to  pull  him  away  from  the  farm  and  deranges  the 
economic  system  of  the  South,  and  that  the  city 
Negro  is  not  worth  as  much  to  the  (white)  South 
as  is  the  rural  Negro,  These  views  consider  the 
Negro  in  his  relation  to  white  people  only  as  a 
commodity.  Suppose  we  consider  the  city  Negro 
from  the  standpoint  of  his  own  interests.  Would  it 
be  better  for  the  American  Negro  if  all  Negroes 
stayed  in  the  rural  districts  and  none  went  to  the 
cities?  The  Negro  as  a  whole  has  been  advertised 
in  his  worst  phase,  but  the  city  Negro,  being  under 
the  whiter  light  of  the  centers  of  civilization,  has 
had  his  baser  and  uglier  traits  more  than  exag- 
gerated. Most  of  what  the  world  has  been  told 
about  him  is  half  truth.  Everybody  knows  that 
cities  produce  the  most  criminal  Negroes,  but 
^  few  know  that  they  produce  the  most  intelligent; 
all  have  heard  of  the  moral  and  physical  disease 
and  death,  but  few  have  been  told  of  his  ad- 
mirable organizations  to  promote  material,  moral, 
and  intellectual  health;  it  is  bruited  abroad  that  he 
fills  proportionately  more  of  the  prisons  and  con- 
vict stockades,  but  there  is  absolute  silence  about 
the  fact  that  he  supplies  by  far  the  greater  number 
of  teachers,  professional  and  business  men  and 


1 62  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  more  competent  preachers.  If  he  fills  the 
city  slums,  he  also  fills  the  greater  proportion  of 
the  best  homes  of  the  Negro  race;  if  his  life 
is  shorter,  it  is  more  interesting;  if  he  is  weaker, 
he  is  wiser.  Better  20  years  of  Atlanta  than 
a  century  of  the  semi-slavery  of  the  "Mississippi 
bottoms."  As  is  true  of  all  races,  the  height  to 
which  the  Negro  has  attained  is  to  be  measured 
in  cities  rather  than  elsewhere.  This  is  due  to 
better  educational  advantages  and  to  the  fact 
that  city  life  tends  more  to  inspire  independence 
of  character. 

Another  argument  which  lends  itself  much  more 
to  passion  than  to  reason,  is  that  the  advance  of 
the  Negro  threatens  race  integrity, — that  is,  the 
integrity  of  the  white  race.  But  experience,  which 
is  the  most  reliable  teacher  in  such  matters,  has 
shown  that  ignorance  and  weakness  in  the  one 
race  constitute  a  far  greater  danger  to  the  integrity 
of  both  than  inteUigence  and  strength  could  pos- 
sibly become.  Put  a  poor,  ignorant  and  defense- 
less woman  in  the  presence  of  a  rich,  powerful 
and  wicked  man,  and  the  only  salvation  for  their 
races  is  to  educate  that  woman  and  her  race.  Igno- 
rance and  weakness  are  fertile  soil  for  bad  fruit- 
age. The  white  race  can  never  be  strong  and  in- 
telligent in  the  midst  of  a  weak  and  ignorant  race. 
God  never  intended  that  a  man  should  get  entirely 
free  from  the  character  of  his  neighbors :  he  must 
always  be  in  part  at  least  what  his  neighbors  are. 
If  we  are  surrounded  by  weak  and  ignorant 
neighbors  we  are  constantly  tempted  to  cheat  and 


u 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  163 

oppress  them ;  sometimes  we  yield  and  sink.  The 
most  helpful  environment  that  a  strong  man  can 
have  is  to  be  surrounded  by  other  strong  men 
whom  he  can  neither  cheat  nor  wrong.  The  race 
is  as  the  man. 

But  the  economic  and  race-integrity  arguments 
are  aimed  against  the  progress  of  the  race  in 
general,  while  there  are  some  special  charges 
aglnst  its  educational  progress  in  particular.  It 
is  charged  that  the  Negro  does  not  pay  taxes;  that 
education  makes  him  more  criminal  and  less  use- 
ful; and  that  his  inferiority  in  general  causes  and 
justifies  the  indifference  and  opposition  to  his  edu- 
cation. 

^  Does  the  Negro  race  pay  taxes?  Does  it  bear 
its  share  of  the  financial  burden  of  state  govern- 
ment? In  the  matter  of  tax-burden  the  just 
measure  of  a  man's  share  is  the  measure  of  his 
ability, — and  I  have  never  heard  that  the  officials 
of  any  state  have  even  pretended  to  say  that  their 
colored  people  do  not  pay  as  taxes  the  same  pro- 
portion of  their  posessions  as  the  white  race  pays. 
This  could  not  be  otherwise,  for  white  people 
assess  and  collect  the  taxes, — and  it  is  generally 
understood  that  the  Negro  who  owns  real  estate 
and  other  visible  property,  is  assessed  in  a  higher 
valuation  than  anybody  else.  If  the  man  who 
owns  a  million  dollars  pays  the  same  number  of 
mills  out  of  each  one  of  those  dollars  as  the 
man  vv^ho  owns  one  dollar  pays  out  of  his  single 
dollar,  the  millionaire  bears  no  greater  burden 
of  taxation  than  the  man  of  a  single  dollar;  and 


1 64  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

indeed  our  new  inheritance  and  income  tax  laws, 
in  their  graduated  scale  of  assessments,  recognize 
the  truth  that  in  such  case  the  man  of  many  dollars 
is  not  burdened  as  much  as  the  man  of  few  dollars. 
All  of  the  widow's  mite  is  more  than  a  tithe  of  the 
rich  man's  hoard.  In  South  Carolina,  where  the 
Negro  child  receives  two  dollars  for  its  education  to 
fourteen  dollars  for  the  white  child,  it  was  proven 
one  year  on  the  authority  of  white  investigators 
that  the  Negroes  paid  by  direct  school  taxation 
every  cent  of  the  money  that  was  spent  on  their 
own  schools  and  twenty  thousand  dollars  of  that 
which  was  spent  on  white  schools. 

That  is  direct  taxation.  But  what  about  indirect 
taxes?  Society  has  other  ways  of  collecting  taxes 
thian  by  a  visit  of  the  tax-collector,  and  more 
people  pay  taxes  than  ever  see  the  inside  of  the 
tax  office.  The  great  indirect  tax,  the  most  im- 
portant tax-burden  of  all,  is  paid  by  every  man 
who  eats  food,  wears  clothes  and  occupies  a  rented 
space  upon  the  ground.  A  landlord  with  a  hundred 
tenants  is  but  a  tax-agent  appointed  by  the  laws 
of  society  to  gather  the  taxes  of  those  tenants 
and  turn  the  same  over  to  the  tax-collector.  He 
raises  rents  or  lowers  wages  in  proportion  to  the 
taxes  he  must  deliver  to  the  state.  The  man  who 
has  the  title  to  the  property  enjoys  this  vantage 
and  honor;  he  does  not  bear  the  burden, — the 
worker  and  the  consumer  have  the  honor  of  doing 
that.  If  vv^e  count  only  direct  taxes  as  taxes,  the 
cause  of  the  non-landholding  element  will  be 
helpless  and  hopeless.     Take  our  Southern  rail- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  165 

roads:  in  proportion  as  the  Negro  uses  them,  in 
that  proportion  does  he  pay  the  company's  taxes. 
But  a  white  man  hands  the  money  to  the  tax- 
collector  and  gets  the  receipt,  and  it  is  recorded 
among  white  men's  taxes.  The  Negro  customer 
pays  the  merchant's  taxes:  the  prices  include  both 
license  and  tax.  Your  very  servants  share  your 
tax-burden.  The  man  who  blacks  your  boots 
help  to  pay  your  taxes:  he  pays  the  tax  on  the 
blacking  when  he  buys  it,  and  if  the  state  would 
forgive  you  your  taxes  you  would  gladly  pay  him 
a  dime  where  you  now  pay  him  a  nickel.  He 
pays  through  the  merchant  and  through  you.  It 
is  as  impossible  to  live  in  the  state  and  not  pay 
as  to  hve  in  the  air  and  not  breathe. 

Does  education  make  Negroes  more  criminal 
and  less  useful?  If  this  were  true,  the  Negro 
would  be  a  contradiction  to  the  experience  of  all 
mankind  in  all  previously  recorded  history.  And 
whoever  makes  the  assertion  should  be  required 
to  prove  the  proposition  beyond  the  slightest 
shadow  of  a  doubt, — else  we  should  continue  to 
expect  the  same  thing  of  the  American  Negro 
that  is  true  in  the  Hves  of  all  the  peoples  of  the 
past,  namely,  that  they  became  better  and  more 
useful  as  they  gained  more  knowledge  of  man  and 
God.  They  have  always  fallen  when  they  have 
forgotten  God  and  oppressed  their  fellowmen.  I 
will  not  beg  the  question  by  saying  that  education 
Itself  means  making  the  man  better  and  more 
useful,  but  I  call  for  the  facts.  The  records 
of  our  schools  harmonize  with  the  experience  of 


1 66  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

mankind:  do  the  graduates  of  Negro  schools  fur- 
nish a  bigger  proportion  in  our  state  penitentiary 
than  do  those  Negroes  who  have  never  seen  the 
inside  of  any  of  these  schools?  No  man  is  bold 
enough  to  affirm  a  definite  thing  like  that,  and 
yet  men  assert  in  a  general  way  that  education 
makes  Negroes  criminals.  If  there  is  a  greater 
proportion  of  our  colored  population  than  of  our 
white  population  in  the  state  penitentiary,  it  is 
partially  explained  by  the  fact  that  it  is  easier  for 
a  Negro  to  get  into  the  penitentiary  than  for 
a  white  man.  Our  white  sheriff,  white  judge, 
white  jury  and  white  lawyers  are  so  partial  to 
the  Negro  who  applies  for  admission  to  our  penal 
institutions  that  they  never  want  to  exclude  him,, 
while  in  the  case  of  a  white  man  there  is  more 
dehberation,  demurrer  and  objection.  If  you  put 
black  men  into  these  official  positions  and  give 
the  accused  white  man  a  fair  chance  to  get  in, 
I  dare  say  that  within  a  very  few  months  he 
would  demonstrate  his  equality  with  the  Negro  in 
this  important  particular.  In  the  case  of  the 
school  it  is  easier  for  the  white  man  and  harder 
for  the  Negro  to  get  in,  and  consequently  there 
is  a  greater  proportion  of  the  v/hite  race  on  the 
inside.  The  law  of  least  resistance  is  a  partial 
explanation  of  these  phenomena. 

As  to  the  question  of  usefulness  the  opposition 
also  states  its  case  in  a  general  way,  but  coming 
down  to  specifications,  are  the  untrained  farmers 
and  ignorant  unskilled  laborers  of  the  Negro  race 
more  useful  to  the  state  than  his  business  and  pro- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  167 

fessional  men,  his  teachers  and  the  trained  gradu- 
ates of  his  industrial  schools?  I  admit  that  an 
ignorant  man  may  be  more  profitable  to  some  indi- 
vidual employer  who  likes  the  advantage,  but  his 
ignorance  is  unprofitable  and  expensive  to  society 
as  a  whole.  And  when  it  is  said  that  education 
"unfits"  the  Negro,  perhaps  it  is  meant  that  it 
makes  him  less  fit  to  be  cheated  and  abused.  It 
makes  him  less  fit  for  individual  exploitation  but 
more  fit  to  serve  the  common  interests  of  a  civi- 
lized community.  How  long  will  some  of  our 
white  people  continue  to  think  that  a  wasteful, 
shiftless  Negro  is  a  good  economic  asset  simply 
because  he  will  take  kicking  and  "cussing?" 

Again,  those  who  are  responsible  for  the  poor 
schools,  few  teachers  and  scant  appropriations, 
seek  to  ease  their  consciences  and  justify  their 
ways  by  charging  the  Negro  race  with  general 
incapacity  and  inferiority.  There  are  seldom 
offered  any  definite  facts  in  support  of  this  theory. 
Sometimes  it  is  said  that  Negroes  do  not  deserve 
or  appreciate  any  better  opportunities  and  almost 
that  they  do  not  want  them.  In  one  of  our 
largest  Southern  cities,  when  an  organization  of 
colored  women  went  to  complain  against  the  bar- 
barous treatment  of  their  public  schools,  one  of 
the  ofl^cials  met  their  complaint  with  the  significant 
statement:  "You  have  already  gotten  much  more 
than  you  ever  asked  for."  And  so  the  impres- 
sion exists  that  not  only  the  Negro's  needs  but 
even  his  wants  are  inferior :  that  an  uncomfortable 
and  unequipped  schoolhouse  will  do  for  the  Negro 


1 68  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

child,  and  that  one  dollar  suffices  for  the  Negro 
teacher  where  three  or  five  dollars  are  needed 
by  the  white  teacher.  There  is  no  surer  way  of 
destroying  sympathy  for  a  man  who  is  being  mis- 
treated than  by  establishing  the  belief  that  the  man 
himself  does  not  care,  that  he  is  satisfied  and 
incapable  of  appreciating  better  treatment.  We 
feel  different  when  the  same  thing  happens  to  a 
man  and  an  animal.  But  there  is  a  commonsense 
philosophy  which  believes  that  men  are  more  ahke 
than  different,  that  they  are  differentiated  by  the 
modifying  influence  of  circumstances,  and  that  they 
cannot  be  classified  a  priori  from  the  color  of  their 
skins  or  the  shapes  of  their  noses. 

Is  not  the  inferiority  of  the  Negro's  educational 
status  and  progress  amply  explained  by  the  in- 
feriority of  his  educational  advantages?  Let  us 
look  at  a  recent  annual  report  of  the  Superinten- 
dent of  Education  in  the  state  of  Alabama  and  see 
what  it  reveals  concerning  the  Negro.  There 
were  more  than  328  thousand  Negro  children 
of  school  age  and  about  399  thousand  white 
children.  In  other  words  about  half,  or  strictly 
more  than  45%  of  the  children  to  be  schooled 
were  Negroes.  In  the  first  place  just  six  schools 
were  provided  for  each  thousand  of  these  colored 
children,  while  twelve  schools  were  provided  for 
each  thousand  whites.  The  property  valuation 
of  the  white  schools  was  more  than  ten  times  the 
value  of  the  Negro  schools;  the  equipment  on  the 
inside  of  the  white  school  was  worth  more  than 
the  land,  buildings  and  all  the  total  property  of 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  169 

the  Negro  school.  If  all  went  to  school  each 
Negro  teacher  would  have  138  pupils,  and  each 
white  teacher  56  pupils.  But  the  Negro  teacher 
is  saved  by  the  fact  that  the  people  are  so  poor 
and  the  schoolhouses  so  uncomfortable  and  incon- 
venient that  only  41%  of  the  colored  children  can 
attend,  while  73%  of  the  whites  attend.  The 
average  salary  of  rural  white  teachers  is  about 
$300, — the  average  of  rural  Negro  teachers  is 
less  than  $150  a  year.  In  our  cities  also  the 
average  salary  of  the  white  teacher  with  fewer 
pupils  is  more  than  double  that  of  the  Negro 
teacher  with  more  pupils.  The  white  schools  have 
20  times  as  many  libraries  as  the  Negro  schools. 
The  state  has  no  higher  education  for  Negroes; 
for  the  whites  there  is  the  university  with 
colleges  and  normal  schools.  There  are  white 
high  schools  for  over  sixteen  thousand  pupils. 
The  figures  given  for  Negro  high  school  grades 
is  1,476.  All  the  agricultural  and  county  high 
schools  are  white.  All  the  school  officials  are 
white. 

What  a  fearful  thing  it  is  to  be  a  superior  race  1 
How  much  it  costs  to  maintain  that  superiority! 
I  almost  believe  that  the  Negro  race  would  be 
tempted  to  retrograde  into  a  superior  race  if  it 
could  get  hold  of  the  money,  the  machinery  and 
the  offices.  To  cope  against  an  inferior  race  in 
education,  a  superior  race  must  have  more  than 
ten  times  as  much  money,  more  than  twice  as  many 
schools,  two  or  three  times  as  many  teachers,  36 
more  of  school  days  in  each  year,  fifteen  to  twenty 


I70  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

times  as  many  auxiliary  books, — and  all  of  the 
management  and  say-so. 

The  race  which  enjoys  all  the  advantages  of 
official  position  and  emolument,  should  be  scrupu- 
lously just  if  not  generous  to  the  cause  of  the  race 
that  has  none  of  these  advantages.  It  is  said 
that  the  legislature  in  its  annual  appropriation 
counts  all  children,  white  and  black,  and  votes 
the  same  number  of  dollars  for  each  head.  That 
is  but  half  the  truth;  the  more  important  half  of 
this  truth  is  in  the  apportionment  of  this  appro- 
priation. What  earthly  good  is  done  the  Negro 
child  by  being  counted  equal  in  the  voting  of  the 
appropriation,  if  it  is  counted  only  one-tenth  in 
the  distribution  of  the  funds?  The  Negro  child 
simply  helps  the  white  child  to  get  a  few  more 
dollars  than  the  white  child  would  otherwise  get. 
One  might  as  well  try  to  justify  disfranchisement 
on  the  ground  that  every  Negro  in  the  state  is 
counted  in  the  basis  of  the  state's  representation 
in  Congress:  the  Negro  population  is  counted  to 
the  advantage  of  the  state  of  Alabama,  but  when 
the  representatives  are  elected  they  are  all  white 
and  represent  white  people.  It  might  be  better 
for  the  Negro  if  his  share  of  the  representation 
were  disallowed  altogether,  for  it  only  increases 
the  power  of  those  who  oppose  him.  The  equal 
count  in  the  legislature  will  do  the  Negro  child  no 
good  unless  he  is  counted  equal  by  county  boards 
and  local  trustees. 

Nobody  will  deny  that  in  the  payment  of  taxes 
and  fines  the  Negro  race  in  America  is  treated  as 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  171 

if  it  were  absolutely  the  equal  of  any  race.  They 
are  assessed  and  fined  as  much  as  anybody.  To 
say  the  least  they  are  given  as  long  terms  in 
our  penitentiary  and  on  our  convict  farms  as  any 
white  man  is  given  for  the  same  offense.  A  people 
v^^ho  are  required  to  bear  equally  the  burdens 
should  be  permitted  to  share  equally  the  benefits 
of  government.  To  get  a  given  amount  of  educa- 
tion the  Negro  child  needs  at  least  the  same 
amount  of  money  as  the  white  child, — for  the  black 
race  can  hardly  be  expected  under  the  circumstances 
to  be  very  superior  to  the  white  race.  Equal  shar- 
ing in  school  funds  would  be  no  favor  to  the  Negro 
race,  but  simply  justice :  his  direct  taxation  is  pro- 
portionately as  high  as  that  of  the  white  race,  and 
his  indirect  tax  is  almost  always  higher, — for  ex- 
ample, on  almost  every  railroad  in  the  South  the 
Negro  pays  proportionately  much  more  for  what 
he  gets  than  does  the  white  man.  Every  landless 
Negro  in  the  state  is  paying  taxes  for  some  one 
else,  usually  for  a  white  landlord. 

The  South  is  now  coming  into  the  era  of  compul- 
sory education.  We  believe  in  it  with  all  our  soul, 
but  the  reform  will  miss  more  than  half  of  its 
great  opportunity  if  it  is  schemed  so  as  to  leave 
out  the  Negro  race ;  if  the  law  is  so  worded  that 
the  proposition  can  be  juggled  in  the  case  of  a 
Negro  child.  If  we  want  to  be  a  civilized  nation, 
we  must  civilize  all  the  people ;  for  we  shall  always 
be  barbaric  in  proportion  as  we  have  an  ignorant 
and  barbarous  population  in  our  midst. 

Vocational  training  is  now  occupying  a  large 


172  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

place  in  the  program  of  our  Southern  states.  This 
is  more  fortunate  for  the  Negro  than  even  some 
of  the  promoters  suppose.  There  is  but  one 
kind  of  education,  and  that  is  developing  in  a 
man  his  individual  possibilities.  But  there  can 
be  no  doubt  of  the  value  right  now  of  voca- 
tional training  for  a  race  economically  situated 
as  the  Negro  race  is  in  this  country  and  having 
the  industrial  opposition  which  it  has,  and 
which  in  many  instances  must  fight  first  to  save 
its  body  in  order  to  give  its  mind  a  chance. 
But  when  I  speak  in  favor  of  industrial  and  voca- 
tional training  I  am  not  speaking  in  favor  of  the 
shams  that  are  to  be  found  in  many  of  his  schools. 
Saws  and  hammers  and  rulers  hanging  on  the 
walls  of  some  public  schoolrooms  do  not  always 
mean  training  of  any  sort,  except  training  in  the 
bad  habit  of  wasting  precious  time.  It  is  some- 
times simply  a  game  between  the  superintendent 
and  the  colored  principal :  the  superintendent  try- 
ing to  graft  another  system  on  the  already  too 
meagre  system  of  academic  instruction,  and  the 
colored  principal  trying  to  satisfy  the  white 
superintendent  without  really  doing  the  thing  sup- 
posed. The  chief  sufferer  is  the  helpless  Negro 
pupil:  in  this  sham  battle  between  his  superiors 
his  chance  for  any  sort  of  effective  training  is 
utterly  lost.  He  not  only  fails  to  get  efficiency, 
but  he  gets  a  bad  moral  lesson :  he  thinks  he  has 
found  out  that  the  way  to  manage  white  people 
is  to  keep  them  fooled.  Surely  our  larger  cities 
should  maintain  distinct  courses,  and  if  possible 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  173 

distinct  school  buildings  for  academic  and  indus- 
trial work.  And  there  should  be  special  teachers 
for  each  class  of  work.  Periods  of  handiwork 
might  accompany  all  the  grades,  but  serious  voca- 
tional training  should  come  after  at  least  a  good 
graded  school  education.  This  will  strengthen  the 
foundation,  on  which  the  student  can  build  a  better 
vocation ;  and  at  any  rate  a  man  should  be  a  man 
before  he  is  a  piece  in  the  world's  machinery. 

What  is  the  Negro  going  to  do  about  it?  He 
must  convince  the  white  man  that  the  education  of 
the  Negro  is  worth  while ;  that  it  will  not  only  not 
hurt  white  people  but  will  help  them.  It  is  not 
enough  to  convince  the  well-disposed  white  man 
only,  but  the  average  white  person.  What  is  the 
white  man  going  to  do  about  it?  We  are  all  in  the 
same  boat,  and  when  this  civilization  reaches  its 
destiny  we  are  all  going  to  arrive  together.  The 
slower  the  machinery  works  in  any  of  its  parts,  the 
slower  will  be  our  progress,  and  the  later  the  day 
of  our  arrival  at  a  more  perfect  social  adjustment. 
The  two  races  must  see  each  other  less  as  com- 
petitors and  more  as  co-workers,  more  as  fellow 
travellers  on  the  road  to  destiny. 

It  is  true  that  the  untutored  Negro  has  been 
useful  to  American  white  people :  he  has  been  the 
instrument  by  which  they  have  felled  their  forests, 
drained  their  swamps,  tilled  their  fields  and  piled 
their  fortunes.  Tho  poor,  he  has  made  them  rich. 
He  has  been  no  burden  :  in  the  name  of  God  he  has 
paid  every  cent  of  his  "keep"  with  interest.  On 
his  back  their  civihzation  has  been  stable,  and  in 


174  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

his  hand  their  life  secure.  He  was  not  objected  to 
until  he  changed  from  an  instrument  into  a  co- 
worker. 

For  nearly  three  hundred  years  in  America  the 
Negro  was  chiefly  an  implement,  the  white  man 
supplying  the  thought.  Upon  this  historic  relation 
is  based  the  extraordinary  question  as  to  whether 
the  free  Negro  should  better  be  trained  in  mind  or 
in  hand.  I  will  tell  you  which  the  American  Negro 
needs  more,  his  mind  or  his  hand,  if  you  will  tell 
me  which  he  can  dispense  with.  It  reminds  me  of 
a  debating  society  which  I  once  ran  across  in  the 
backwoods  of  the  Alabama  "black  belt,"  in  which 
the  subjects  for  debate  on  the  regular  meeting 
nights  ran  like  these:  "Which  is  the  more  useful 
to  man,  the  steamboat  or  the  railroad?"  or  "which 
is  the  more  necessary  to  man,  air  or  water?"  It 
is  hard  for  some  white  men  to  think  of  the  black 
man  other  than  as  either  a  useful  thing  or  a  nuis- 
ance. They  cannot  conceive  him  as  a  thinking, 
self-active  agent  pursuing  his  own  ends.  As  a  free 
'man  he  must  put  thought  in  front  of  his  work  and 
industry.  He  must  think  first  and  act  afterwards. 
As  a  member  of  the  body  politic,  instead  of  a  mere 
tool  thereof,  he  must  cultivate  the  intellect,  which 
is  the  guide  both  to  the  hand  and  to  the  heart.  The 
intellect  is  the  dynamo,  the  hand  is  the  motor;  it 
is  also  one  of  the  eyes  of  conscience.  The  mind 
of  man  is  his  pathfinder  in  industry  and  in  moral 
prudence :  it  is  the  most  lordly  and  admirable  thing 
in  the  human  world.  Nothing  is  great  in  the  world 
but  man,  nothing  great  in  man  but  mind.     It  has 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  175 

searched  the  inscrutable  past  and  prophesied  the 
unsearchable  future.  It  has  delved  to  the  center 
of  the  earth  and  mounted  to  the  invisible  star.  It 
has  taken  the  rocks  of  the  earth  as  the  pages  of  a 
ponderous  book  and  has  read  therein  the  history 
of  the  prehistoric  age  and  the  records  of  a  manless 
world.  From  the  scattered  bones  of  the  sohtary 
plains  it  has  reconstructed,  clothed  in  flesh  and 
revived  the  ancestor  of  man  and  beast.  With  its 
daring  hand  it  has  caught  the  loud-threatening 
thunderbolt,  tamed  it  and  made  of  it  a  willing 
messenger.  In  its  magic  hand  it  catches  the  ray 
of  light  that  has  fled  from  the  verge  of  the  uni- 
verse and  compels  it  to  "reveal  the  secrets"  of  its 
far-off  home.  Standing  in  the  present  it  links  the 
past  and  future,  projects  and  extends  the  life  of  an 
individual  man  over  milleniums  of  history,  and  it 
re-thinks  the  very  thoughts  of  God. 


FROM  THE  CHRISTIAN  VIEWPOINT 

"Whom  the  gods  would  destroy  they  first  make 
mad."  That  is  the  method  of  inferior  "gods"  and 
devils.  But  whom  the  true  God  loves  and  whom 
he  would  make  great,  he  challenges,  he  tries,  he 
tests,  he  proves.  The  Negro  race  in  America  is 
God's  high  challenge  and  supreme  test  of  Amer- 
ican Christian  democracy.  Will  it  accept  the  chal- 
lenge?   Can  it  stand  the  test? 

There  are  other  tests  which  America  has  met 
and  is  meeting,  but  this  is  the  supreme  test.  The 
question  is  not  whether  we  can  receive  from  for- 
eign lands  multitudes,  who  are  of  the  same  race 
and  color  as  ninety  per  cent  of  our  American  pop- 
ulation, and  assimilate  them  to  our  civilization, — 
but  here  is  a  people  who  are  a  part  of  America's 
own  history,  speaking  her  language  and  knowing 
only  her  institutions,  differing  merely  in  race  and 
color,  or,  to  speak  more  truly,  differing  only  par- 
tially in  race  and  color, — and  the  question  is :  Can 
American  Christianity  and  democracy  cross  this 
imaginary  line,  or  is  it  easier  to  cross  the  ocean? 
Will  the  American  religion  be  exclusive  like  Juda- 
ism, but  without  having  as  good  reasons  for  its  ex- 
clusiveness?  Judaism  could  justify  its  narrowness 
on  the  deep  grounds  of  national  history  and  self- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  i77 

defense.  The  best  test  of  American  Christianity 
is  not  whether  we  can  send  the  most  missionaries, 
count  the  most  converts  and  spend  the  most  money 
in  India,  China  and  Japan  or  even  Africa,  but 
what  can  we  do  and  what  are  we  doing  for  ten 
million  Negroes  in  America.  It  is  not  whether  we 
can  preach  brotherhood  to  all  the  world,  but 
whether  we  can  practice  brotherhood  in  our  neigh- 
borhood. 

With  neither  hope  nor  intention  of  detracting 
from  the  glory  and  goodness  of  foreign  mission- 
ary work,  we  say  that  the  spirit  of  the  Founder  of 
Christianity  is  opposed  to  a  sentiment  which  makes 
it  easier  to  practice  Christian  brotherhood  through 
the  collection  box,  the  mails  and  the  missionary 
magazines  than  to  practice  the  same  across  the 
street  and  over  my  neighbor's  fence.  The  meek 
but  fearless  Jesus  of  Nazareth  would  have  called 
such  inconsistency  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  Pharisaism. 
The  principles  of  Christianity  are  pre-eminently 
suited  to  a  solution  of  our  domestic  problems.  Its 
teaching  is  necessarily  democratic;  it  was  founded 
by  a.  democrat.  Whatever  the  outward  govern- 
ment of  the  community,  its  Christianity  must  be  a 
democracy, — a  democracy  of  souls.  It  is  a  radical 
doctrine,  and  compromises  are  conspicuously  ab- 
sent from  its  fundamental  teachings:  Love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself  —  Love  your  enemies  — '  The 
gain  of  the  world  will  not  compensate  the  loss  of  a 
soul — All  nations  are  of  one  blood — and  in  that 
sheet  which  Peter  saw  let  down  from  heaven  there 


178  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

were  not  only  beasts  and  birds  but  toads  and 
snakes. 

Such  is  the  doctrine  that  has  proved  to  be  of 
greater  vitality  than  any  other  in  the  history  of 
human  nature.  For  nearly  two  thousand  years  it 
has  met  no  condition  or  phase  of  society  where  it 
proved  to'  be  inapplicable.  It  includes  Jew  and 
gentile,  Greek  and  barbarian;  it  began  in  the  low- 
est ranks  of  society,  but  has  long  ago  reached  the 
highest.  What  will  this  simple  doctrine  mean  if 
applied  to  American  race  conditions  without  adul- 
teration? Let  us  consider  its  application:  in  In- 
dustry, in  Pohtics,  in  the  Church,  and  in  our  social 
relations  generally. 

There  is  need  of  a  higher  ideal  of  Christian 
brotherhood  in  the  industrial  forces  of  this  coun- 
try, not  only  as  between  employer  and  employed, 
but  also  between  different  groups  of  the  employed, 
and  especially  between  different  race  groups.  In 
all  industrial  pursuits  race  lines  should  be  obliter- 
ated. How  can  one  laborer  consistently  or  safely 
deny  to  another  the  right  to  earn  his  bread  in  the 
sweat  of  his  face?  Labor  unions  should  be  prin- 
cipled not  on  social  equahty  but  on  the  equality  of 
labor.  Christianity  is  utterly  opposed  to  denying 
tfie  black  man  the  right  to  work  in  any  sphere  or 
Calling  for  which  he  is  individually  fit:  for  if  col- 
ored folk  are  brothers  in  Christ,  why  are  they  not 
also  brothers  in  the  machine-shop  and  the  factory? 
Besides,  it  is  against  the  interest  of  the  labor  unions 
themselves  to  exclude  the  Negro :  if  there  is  any 
need  for  the  union  of  labor,  there  is  the  same  need 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  179 

for  the  union  of  all  labor,  white  and  black.  When 
the  black  man  is  excluded  he  is  made  a  strike- 
breaker and  wage-reducer;  he  is  forced  into  war 
upon  organized  labor,  and  the  fact  that  this  war  is 
marked  by  the  color  line  causes  discord  to  grow 
between  the  races.  Some  shrewd  and  unscrupulous 
employers  will  foster  race  dissension  in  the  labor- 
ing forces,  and  thus  keep  all  labor  as  near  as  pos- 
sible to  starvation  wages  by  the  strategy  of  "divide 
and  conquer."  But  the  Christian  rehgion,  which 
was  founded  by  a  laborer  and  originated  among 
the  common  people,  should  be  the  means  of  bring- 
ing the  industrial  element  of  the  two  races  into 
closer  fellowship  and  co-operation. 

Christianity  is  opposed  to  any  effort  to  restrict 
colored  people  to  any  certain  sphere  of  employ- 
ment, be  that  sphere  high  or  low.  Not  all  Negroes 
are  fit  to  be  lawyers,  and  not  all  Negroes  are  fit 
to  be  farmers.  The  Negro  race  has  a  varied 
genius,  especially  in  America,  where  it  seems  to 
be  a  part  of  all  other  races;  and  it  is  uneconomic 
and  wasteful  of  human  energies  to  attempt  to  force 
any  race  into  any  limited  number  of  occupations. 
The  only  sensible  reason  for  engaging  in  any  line 
of  work  is  individual  fitness.  For  the  useful  activi- 
ties known  to  mankind,  color  neither  fits  nor  unfits. 
The  color  line  in  work  is  not  natural  and  the  race 
test  is  artificial;  and  segregation  on  this  artificial 
line,  rather  than  on  the  natural  basis  of  individual 
fitness,  not  only  wastes  human  energy  by  keeping 
men  out  of  activities  for  which  they  are  naturally 
fit,  but,  as  in  the  case  of  the  exclusive  labor  union, 


i8o  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

it  sows  the  seeds  of  discord  and  postpones  the  day 
of  race  adjustment.  And  besides  all  this  argument 
on  the  lower  plane  of  industrial  and  economic  wel- 
fare, we  can  say  in  a  higher  plane  that  Christ  rec- 
ognized the  value  and  the  rights  of  the  individual, 
so  that  the  whole  circumscription,  restriction  and 
segregation  idea  is  most  cruelly  unchristian. 

The  same  logic  and  the  same  sense  of  justice 
should  forbid  "colored  wages,"  as  well  as  "wom- 
en's wages."  Workers  should  be  rewarded  for 
work,  and  not  for  sex  or  color.  Wage  discrimi- 
nation on  race  and  sex  is  a  relic  of  barbarism,  at- 
testing the  former  enslavement  of  color  and  of 
women.  When  white  workmen  combine  to  compel 
the  employer  to  pay  Negro  workmen  a  lower  wage 
for  the  same  work,  they  throw  a  boomerang:  they 
force  into  the  employer's  hand  a  weapon  to  cut 
down  their  own  wages,  and  they  justify  the  Negro 
in  accepting  lower  wages  to  secure  employment, — 
all  of  which  disturbs  our  interracial  peace.  And 
when  the  employer  dehberately  and  of  his  own  ac- 
cord pays  "colored  wages,"  he  not  only  commits 
legalized  robbery  against  the  Negro,  but  he  lessens 
the  motive  to  work  in  his  white  workmen  who  come 
to  feel  that  the  margin  of  extra  pay  which  they  re- 
ceive is  not  for  any  extra  work  which  they  should 
do,  but  only  the  privilege  of  their  birth  and  caste. 
He  sows  the  dragon's  teeth  of  discrimination  and 
reaps  repeated  crops  of  demands  for  more  privi- 
lege, more  immunity,  less  work  and  more  recogni- 
tion of  mere  color.  And  he  is  constantly  tempted 
to  meet  these  demands  in  so  far  as  possible  at  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  i8i 

expense  of  the  "colored  wages."  But  what  can 
be  expected  In  the  lower  walks  of  life,  if  in  the 
the  United  States  Government,  in  some  church  or- 
ganizations, religious  societies  and  schools  there 
are  special  salaries  and  fixed  places  for  the  colored 
co-laborer?  Will  not  this  tend  to  demoralize  the 
youth  of  both  races?  They  will  see  that  the  value 
is  placed,  not  on  individual  worth  and  attainment, 
but  on  the  accidents  of  privilege  and  caste,  and 
they  will  feel  in  their  hearts  that  our  religious  pro- 
fessions and  democratic  declarations  are  largely  a 
sham.  The  white  boy  will  strive  less,  thinking 
that  striving  for  him  is  less  necessary;  the  black 
boy  will  strive  less,  thinking  that  striving  for  him 
is  in  vain. 

And  now  we  come  to  politics.  We  are  not  talk- 
ing about  demagogism  and  petty  trickery,  but  poli- 
tics in  the  noblest  sense  of  that  honorable  word. 
There  are  those  who  admit  or  concede  that  the 
Negro  should  have  the  privilege  of  work :  that  he 
should  be  allowed  to  labor  In  any  industrial  and 
some  professional  lines,  to  receive  equal  pay  for 
equal  work  and  accumulate  property  to  any 
amount, — and  still  they  say  that  he  should  not  take 
part  in  politics.  This  position  is  Inconsistent:  half 
freedom  Is  half  slavery,  half  civilization  is  half 
barbarism,  and  an  intentional  half  truth  is  a  whole 
lie.  These  people  assume  the  impossible:  that 
there  can  be  secure  democracy  in  industry  along- 
side of  oligarchy  and  repression  In  government, — 
that  the  right  of  property  is  safe  when  the  right 
of  self-government  Is  denied.     They  forget  that 


1 82  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  power  to  tax  is  the  power  to  confiscate,  and 
that  taxation  without  representation  Is  tyranny  and 
an  irresistible  temptation  to  legahzed  robbery.  Is 
it  not  the  purpose  of  votes  to  defend  and  advance 
the  interests  of  those  who  vote?  Can  it  be  that 
people  who  would  deny  a  man  the  means  of  self- 
defense  and  advancement  would  still  be  wiUIng 
that  he  should  be  defended  and  advanced?  But, 
they  say  consolingly,  with  the  privilege  of  work 
and  the  accumulation  of  wealth  the  political  rights 
will  come.  Will  they  ?  Do  rights  ever  "come  ?" — 
or  must  they  be  gone  after  and  repeatedly  gone 
after  until  they  are  got?  Has  the  accumulation  of 
dollars  brought  political  rights  to  the  Russian  Jew, 
or  has  It  made  him  a  richer  prey  for  the  oppressor 
and  a  quicker  temptation  to  the  leader  of  pogroms? 
Growing  wealth  without  the  capacity  for  self-de- 
fense is  an  Increasing  menace  to  the  lives  of  those 
who  possess  It  and  to  the  character  of  those  who 
covet  it. 

But  when  we  speak  of  the  Negro  and  politics 
there  are  some  who  always  speak  of  reconstruction 
days ;  they  talk  fifty  years  behind  the  times, — as  if 
the  inevitable  condition  of  the  Negro  fifty  years 
ago  were  proof  against  the  Negro  of  to-day, — 
as  if  the  consequences  of  Ignorance  were  an  argu- 
ment against  undeniable  Intelligence.  Does  such  a 
man  not  know  that  the  Negro's  condition  has 
changed  in  fifty  years,  and  that  if  he  could  even 
prove  that  the  race  should  not  have  been  enfran- 
chised fifty  years  ago,  the  proof  would  have  little 
bearing  on  the  question  of  to-day?     The  present 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  183 

unreasonable  opposition  to  an  intelligent  Negro 
vote  proves  the  wisdom  of  providence :  providence 
foresaw  that  if  the  Negro  were  not  enfranchised 
in  the  day  of  Sumner  and  Stevens,  he  could  not  be 
enfranchised  in  the  day  of  Vardaman  and  Blease. 
The  Negro  cannot  be  normally  included  every- 
where else  and  excluded  from  pohtics.  And  the 
brotherhood  of  Christ  and  the  "Golden  Rule" 
would  deter  any  Christian  group  from  placing  such 
a  heavy  handicap  upon  another  and  taking  such 
serious  advantage. 

Any  attempt  to  exclude  the  Negro  from  politics 
and  equality  of  citizenship  could  be  defended  only 
on  some  such  assumptions  as  these :  that  the  white 
race  is  so  highly  developed  morally  and  spiritually 
that  it  can  justly  take  absolute  and  unchecked  con- 
trol of  another  people,  and  that  the  Negro  if  ad- 
mitted to  self-government  would  make  it  worse  for 
himself  and  others.  But,  indeed,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race,  which  is  somewhat  new  in  the  walks  of  civili- 
zation, has  nowhere  shown  such  superhuman  ca- 
pacity for  self-control  as  is  implied  in  the  first 
assumption.  Wherever  it  has  been  in  control  of 
other  peoples  it  has  proven  itself  thoroughly  hu- 
man, and  it  would  be  unfair  to  the  destiny  of  the 
American  white  man  to  subject  him  to  any  such 
temptation.  The  second  assumption  is  rendered 
unnecessary  by  the  fact  that  the  Negro  can  be  ad- 
mitted under  fair,  just  and  equal  tests  for  his  quali- 
fication. There  should  be  no  "grandfather"  tests, 
— altho  many  of  those  who  voted  before  the  war 
were  grandfathers  to  the  present  generation  of 


1 84  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

Negroes.  The  tests  should  apply,  not  to  the  con- 
ditions of  a  previous  generation,  but  to  the  attain- 
ments of  the  present  generation, — to  the  man  who 
wants  to  vote  and  not  to  his  grandfather.  As  to 
the  severity  of  the  test  the  Negro  has  no  specifica- 
tion ;  whatever  education  or  other  attainable  quali- 
fication the  white  race  may  feel  able  to  require  of 
itself,  the  Negro  will  not  murmur  if  the  same,  no 
more  or  less,  is  required  of  him.  Less  than  this 
no  race  with  a  sense  of  its  own  manhood  and  in- 
terests could  ask.  Less  than  this  no  Christian- 
spirited  people  would  grant. 

And  we  come  now  to  the  church  itself.  And 
by  church  here  we  mean  everything  there  is  to  it : 
spiritual  body,  membership,  organization,  and 
whatever  else  the  term  may  connote.  If  the  Negro 
is  to  be  counted  as  an  equal  in  anything  with  which 
Christian  people  have  to  do,  surely  that  equality 
should  begin  in  the  Christian  church.  But  we  find 
church  leaders,  some  of  eminence  and  influence, 
trying  to  twist  the  simple  and  straightforward  gos- 
pel of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  support  of  color-preju- 
dice and  race  injustice.  There  is  nothing  in  any 
religion  that  is  clearer  than  the  attitude  of  Jesus 
Christ  on  the  relation  of  his  church  to  all  men  and 
the  universality  of  its  principles  and  privileges. 
The  true  Christian  church  is  the  best  authorized 
and  the  most  inclusive  democracy  in  the  world. 
But  there  are  not  wanting  among  its  leaders  men 
who  think  behind  the  age,  medieeval-minded  men, 
who  would  make  the  pulpit  the  mouthpiece  of 
Mammon  and  the  church  the  citadel  of  privilege 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  185 

and  caste.  Can  the  American  church  stand  for 
righteousness  as  applied  to  the  Negro  in  America? 
Or  is  it  easier  to  cross  the  ocean  and  help  the  Ne- 
gro in  Africa,  where  Mammon  and  the  oppressor 
have  less  objection?  Jesus  Christ  would  have  made 
a  parable  on  such  weakness  and  Inconsistency.  If 
the  church  beheves  in  itself  it  must  believe  in  the 
black  man  in  this  country,  for  there  is  no  possible 
(interpretation  of  the  teaching  of  Christ  which 
would  exclude  the  American  Negro  or  any  other 
race. 

It  has  been  hinted  that  church  leaders  do  not 
find  it  easy  to  stand  by  the  Negro  outside  of  the 
church  because  they  have  not  yet  whole-heartedly 
accepted  the  Negro  on  the  inside  of  the  church. 
Some  seem  to  think  that  we  can  be  separated  on 
earth  but  united  in  heaven, — or  they  take  the  atti- 
tude that  the  church  is  primarily  a  white  man's  in- 
stitution and  that  the  Negro  is  to  be  tolerated  only 
in  so  far  as  will  not  seem  inconsistent  with  what 
they  conceive  to  be  the  best  interests  of  that  in- 
stitution,— somewhat  as  the  politician  relates  the 
Negro  to  state  government  or  as  the  educational 
authorities  relate  him  to  the  public  school.  If  any 
church  or  religious  organization  takes  this  attitude 
toward  the  rising  generation  of  American  Negroes, 
it  will  seem  hypocritical,  it  will  lose  them,  it  will 
fail, — and  it  will  create  about  the  most  serious 
danger  that  our  civilization  has  yet  had  to  face. 
The  Christian  church  which  lays  so  much  stress  on 
the  value  and  importance  of  the  soul  and  relatively 
so  minimizes  the  importance  of  every  other  thing, 


1 86  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

even  the  human  body,  can  have  but  one  consistent 
attitude  on  the  question  of  the  degradation,  segre- 
gation and  "jim-crowing"  of  colored  Christians. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  phase  of  the  question 
in  which  men  usually  deliberate  with  their  pre- 
judices and  decide  with  their  passions.  But  we 
believe  that  even  this  matter  is  amenable  to  reason 
and  commonsense  and  to  the  principles  of  Chris- 
tianity. Some  say :  We  know  that  the  Negro  must 
work  and  that  he  should  be  secure  in  his  property; 
that  it  is  inconsistent  and  perhaps  even  dangerous 
to  our  own  liberties  to  attempt  to  exclude  him  from 
the  democracy;  and  that  without  him  the  church 
cannot  really  follow  Jesus  Christ;  but,  they  con- 
clude, we  imagine  and  fear  that  the  advance  of  the 
Negro  threatens  race  integrity.  Let  us  look  this 
matter  squarely  in  the  face.  We  hold  no  brief 
either  for  or  against  race  integrity:  we  do  not  now 
argue  whether  it  is  a  good  or  a  bad  thing;  for 
present  purposes  we  can  grant  anybody's  opinion 
on  that  question.  We  ask  this  question :  Whatever 
may  be  the  correct  position  in  that  matter,  will 
not  two  educated,  elevated.  Christianized  and 
mutually  respectful  races  be  better  able  and  more 
likely  to  assume  that  correct  position  than  two 
degraded,  un-Christian  and  mutually  hateful 
groups?  If  the  Negro  is  civilized  and  Christian- 
ized he  can  be  all  the  more  readily  brought  to 
understand  and  agree  to  his  proper  relation  to  the 
white  race,  whatever  that  may  be.  To  take  the 
opposite  view  is  to  indict  civihzation  and  Chris- 
tianity.   The  case  may  be  without  exact  precedent, 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  187 

but  any  other  assumption  contradicts  commonsense 
and  arises  from  unreasonable  fear.  Commonsense 
lighted  by  the  torch  of  experience  is  our  only  g^ide 
in  a  new  matter.  And  if  we  must  proceed  at  times 
without  experience,  is  not  the  kingdom  of  heaven  of 
as  much  concern  to  the  church  as  the  distinction 
of  race  types?  Is  the  salvation  of  the  world  of 
less  account  than  the  preservation  of  an  aquiline 
nose? 

The  bases  of  co-operation  are  these :  identity 
of  interest,  mutual  understanding,  mutual  respect 
and  mutual  trust.  As  to  identity  of  interest, — God 
never  bound  two  races  more  firmly  to  the  same 
destiny  than  the  white  and  black  people  of  this 
country:  we  are  all  in  the  same  boat,  and  when 
we  land  we  are  all  going  to  land  together,  however 
much  we  may  delay  the  journey  by  mutual  bickering 
and  useless  hostilities.  And  there  must  be  mutual 
understanding:  naturally  misunderstanding  des- 
troys co-operation,  and  the  failure  of  co-operation 
begets  new  misunderstandings,  so  that  our  mutual 
troubles  chase  each  other  in  a  never  ending,  self 
perpetuating  cycle.  When  two  differing  parties 
come  thoroughly  to  understand  each  other,  in  that 
moment  do  half  of  their  differences  dissolve,  or 
rather  are  found  to  be  non-existent  and  imaginary. 
To  know  each  other  we  must  cross  the  line, — or 
come  near  enough  to  it  to  shake  hands  and  talk. 
And  mutual  respect  will  increase  with  mutual 
understanding:  we  cannot  be  just  to  a  man  whom 
we  do  not  respect,  for  he  will  not  let  us, — he  will 
resent  disrespect  and  that  will  embitter  us.     But 


1 88  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

mutual  trust  like  a  well-nurtured  plant,  will  grow 
out  of  understanding  and  respect, — and  on  trust 
will  blossom  the  flower  of  Peace! 

But,  think  some,  that  means  equality.  Exactly  I 
Equality  in  the  truest  and  noblest  sense  of  the 
word.  The  equality  of  manhood  does  not  mean 
that  you  are  as  tall  as  I  am,  that  you  weigh  as 
much,  that  you  have  as  good  health  or  that  you  can 
commit  a  dozen  lines  of  Homer's  Iliad  as  quickly. 
All  men,  as  individuals,  are  unequal  in  those  re- 
spects. But  it  means  that  you  are  as  free  to  do  what 
*you  can  do  as  I  am  to  do  what  I  can  do,  and  that  we 
are  equally  accountable  to  the  laws  of  man  and  the 
laws  of  God.  There  is  no  other  equahty  worth 
the  mention.  This  is  the  foundation  of  real  friend- 
ship and  lasting  peace,  and  on  such  basis  we  can  co- 
operate. But  if  we  approach  each  other  in  differ- 
ent planes  there  will  not  be  co-operation,  tho  there 
may  be  a  more  or  less  distressing  operation  of 
the  one  upon  the  other. 

But  perfect  understanding,  sound  respect,  mu- 
tual trust  and  ideal  co-operation  are  largely  a  mat- 
ter of  growth.  In  the  meanwhile  what  is  our 
duty  to  each  other?  The  Negro  of  brains  and 
character  must  not  only  feel  responsible  for  his 
individual  conduct,  but  an  interest  amounting  al- 
most to  a  sense  of  responsibility  for  the  rest  of 
his  race.  It  is  not  enough  for  him  to  say  simply 
that  he  does  not  condone  the  criminals  of  his  race 
and  to  abjure  responsibihty  for  their  conduct:  he 
must  show  an  active  interest  in  their  reformation. 
For,  whether  or  not  as  a  matter  of  right,  they  do 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  189 

as  a  matter  of  fact  affect  him.  It  Is  God's  way  of 
keeping  us  interested  in  the  lower  element,  by 
weaving  our  destiny  with  theirs.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  not  enough  for  the  enlightened  and  con- 
scientious white  man  to  say,  when  others  kill  or 
degrade  or  plunder  the  Negro,  that  "they  do  not 
represent  the  best  white  South."  The  worst  white 
South  will  help  to  make  destiny  for  the  best.  In 
this  world  certainly,  and  I  expect  in  the  next;  for 
before  God  we  are  all  respondsible  to  the  utmost 
of  our  ability.  The  best  white  people  of  the  South 
are  therefore  more  responsible  than  any  other 
single  element,  for  they  are  the  ablest  and  have 
the  greatest  circumstantial  advantages. 

Finally  we  aver  our  faith  In  the  Christian  relig- 
ion and  its  fitness  to  bring  these  two  races  into  a 
right  and  peaceful  relationship.  Christianity 
has  met  and  overcome  hard  things  in  its  history: 
the  corruption  of  empires,  the  stubbornness  of 
superstition  and  the  night  of  heathendom.  It  has 
brought  truer  freedom  and  stabler  self-govern- 
ment than  the  world  has  ever  known  before.  It 
is  the  faith  of  the  buoyant  Negro  race  that  this 
most  vital  of  all  reforming  and  informing  forces 
will  ultimately  help  us,  white  and  black  In  this 
country,  to  lay  aside  the  sin  of  prejudice  that  doth 
so  easily  and  so  sorely  beset  us  and  run  with 
courage  and  endurance  the  race  of  civilization 
which  God  has  set  before  us. 


LYNCHING 

The  individual  lyncher  should  be  treated  as 
a  lawbreaker  and  murderer.  But  the  ultimate  re- 
moval of  any  such  evil  must  come  through  the 
evolution  of  public  opinion,  the  persistent  combat- 
ting of  lies  and  the  gradual  bringing  out  of  truth. 
No  law  and  no  executive  can  do  away  with  such 
evils  until  these  civilizing  influences  have  done 
their  work;  but  a  good  law  and  a  strong  executive 
are  powerful  elements  behind  this  evolutionary 
process.  They  help  along  the  evolution.  But  our 
purpose  here,  as  generally  in  these  essays,  is  to  make 
the  condition  known.  Our  only  apology  is  the  fact 
that  conditions  are  not  known  to  the  American  pub- 
lic as  a  whole.  Ignorance  is  the  trench  through 
which  all  this  deviltry  has  sneaked  up  close  to 
the  very  life  of  our  civilization.  The  average 
American  white  man  does  not  know  how  distorted, 
how  absolutely  false  often,  are  the  reports  of  the 
causes  which  lead  to  a  lynching.  If  the  average 
American  knew,  he  would  be  opposed  to  lynching; 
else  the  average  American  is  not  human.  If  a  man 
reads  the  press  dispatches  about  the  causes  of 
lynchings  and  thinks  he  is  reading  the  truth  even  in 
one  case  out  of  many,  he  is  a  novitiate,  he  is  indeed 
very,  very  "green."  If  he  should  witness  one  or 
two  such  cases  and  then  compare  what  he  knows 

190 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  191 

with  what  he  reads  in  the  newspapers,  he  would  be 
cured.  These  fabricated  reports,  however,  have 
fashioned  public  opinion.  The  pitiful  and  almost 
helpless  ignorance  of  this  public  opinion  is  shown 
by  what  the  good  white  man  will  usually  ask  or 
say  whenever  he  talks  on  lynching.  "Well,  why 
don't  the  Negroes  stop  committing  crimes?" 
Think  of  the  wisdom  of  that  question  1  If  some 
malignant  power  should  decide  that  white  people 
must  be  hanged  and  burned  without  trial  until  the 
white  race  "stops  committing  crimes,"  for  how 
many  thousand  years  do  we  suppose  the  hanging 
and  burning  would  continue  ?  Again  we  are  asked, 
"Why  do  colored  men  keep  on  assaulting  white 
women?"  This  question  is  asked  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  all  the  evidence  of  a  decade  proves  that 
such  crimes  are  very  exceptional,  that  criminal 
assault  is  not  the  cause  of  the  lynching  of  Negroes, 
that  only  a  small  per  cent  of  those  lynched  are  even 
so  much  as  charged  with  any  kind  of  connection 
with  women,  and  that  in  the  South  (as  has  often 
been  found  after  the  Negro  was  dead  and  buried)  ; 
"charged"  does  not  mean  proven.  One  who  lives 
in  the  South  for  many  years  where  Negro  men 
are  in  daily  contact  with  the  white  race  in  private 
life,  is  impressed  with  the  fact  of  how  exceedingly 
rare  it  is  for  a  colored  man  to  impose  in  any  way 
upon  a  white  woman.  But  the  few  scattered  cases 
are  gatherd  together  by  the  white  press  and  hurled 
into  the  ears  of  the  innocent  outside  world  with 
great  effect. 

If  only  colored  women  could  be  equally  safe  in 


192  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  hands  of  white  men !  The  writer  has  lived 
nearly  all  his  life  in  the  heart  of  the  Southern  South. 
In  all  of  that  time  he  never  stood  face  to  face 
with  a  case  or  personally  knew  of  a  case,  in  any 
of  the  many  communities  in  which  he  lived,  of 
a  colored  man  committing  assault  upon  a  white 
woman.  But  in  the  same  time  and  in  the  same 
places  he  knew  of  so  many  cases  where  white 
men  forcibly  outraged  colored  girls  that  he  can- 
not now  recollect  or  count  them  all.  He  knew 
of  cases  where  colored  men  suffered  violence  for 
protecting  the  females  of  their  families,  and  of  a 
few  cases  of  colored  men  who  were  forced  to  leave 
the  community  because  they  were  vaguely 
suspected  of  intimacy  with  white  women.  But 
the  average  colored  woman  of  the  South  thinks 
that  our  moral  world  is  upside-down  indeed  when 
she  hears  that  colored  men  are  lynched  for  offering 
indirect  verbal  insult  to  white  women. 

The  cause  of  lynching  is  not  Negro  crime  of  any 
sort.  The  temptation  of  the  lyncher  is  the  weak 
administration  of  the  law  when  the  Negro  is  to 
be  protected  and  the  helpless  position  into  which 
the  colored  race  is  forced  by  disfranchisement 
and  other  forms  of  oppression.  The  ultimate 
motive  is  human  greed  and  the  desire  to  keep  the 
Negro  economically  dependent.  Lynching  is  one 
of  the  necessary  products  of  the  general  repres- 
sion of  the  race.  In  short,  the  Negro  will  be 
lynched  and  brutally  handled  by  the  lower  elements 
of  the  white  race  as  long  as  he  is  disfranchised 
and  pushed  down  by  the  upper  elements.     The 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  193 

one  thing  which  the  Negro's  white  friends  and 
the  more  friendly  statesmen  seem  not  to  under- 
stand, is  that  no  people  could  be  held  in  the 
position  in  which  they  wish  to  hold  the  Negro 
without  being  made  the  prey  of  the  baser  elements 
of  the  stronger  race.  It  is  hard  really  for  even  the 
best  white  people  to  tell  just  exactly  what  position 
they  do  want  the  Negro  to  occupy.  But  this  seems 
true  :  that  the  majority  want  him  down  and  under, 
but  do  not  wish  to  brutally  mistreat  him  in  any 
other  way, — they  would  not  hang  and  burn  him 
without  law.  They  fail  to  see,  however,  that 
brutality  and  murder  are  the  necessary  sequel  to 
their  own  finer  forms  of  repression:  if  the  better 
whites  keep  the  Negro  down,  the  inferior  whites 
will  take  care  of  the  hanging  and  burning.  The 
only  way  in  civihzation  to  save  the  American 
Negro  is  to  permit  him  to  save  himself, — to 
enfranchise  him  and  give  him  otherwise  a  full 
man's  chance  in  America. 

We  will  give  a  few  illuminating  cases,  the  truth 
of  which  we  learned  in  spite  of  the  newspapers. — 
In  one  Southern  town  where  w^e  lived  for  a  number 
of  years,  a  Negro  was  brought  in  from  a  neighbor- 
ing state  to  work  in  a  new  industry.  He  was  an 
expert  at  what  he  was  to  do,  and  the  management 
could  not  find  a  white  man  in  the  community  who 
could  do  the  work  as  well.  His  wages  were 
accordingly  above  that  of  the  white  men.  He 
was  a  genial  fellow,  was  liked  by  the  superin- 
tendent, but  was  the  object  of  frequent  petty 
insult  from  his  fellow  workmen.     One  day  they 


194  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

removed  the  dipper  from  the  water-bucket  so  that 
he  could  not  drink.  The  Negro  complained  of 
this,  not  in  the  presence  of  the  men,  but  in  the 
presence  of  the  boy  who  brought  the  water.  The 
boy  told  the  men.  They  immediately  began  to 
threaten  the  Negro,  one  of  them  actually  telephon- 
ing to  the  town  for  one  of  his  friends  to  come  out 
and  help  kill  a  Negro,  saying  that  there  would  be 
"hell  to  play."  This  friend  coolly  announced  to 
others  what  was  going  to  be  done  and  got  into  his 
buggy  and  went  out.  Meanwhile  the  Negro  had 
gotten  anxious  for  his  own  safety,  and  had  brought 
back  his  revolver  when  he  returned  from  noon 
lunch.  When  the  mill  closed  and  he  was  emerging 
from  the  door  the  white  man  and  his  friend,  who 
had  been  drinking  preparatory  to  the  deed,  opened 
fire  on  the  Negro.  The  white  superintendent 
testified  that  the  Negro  was  shot  in  the  hand  be- 
fore he  took  his  own  revolver  from  his  pocket. 
But  by  good  luck,  and  by  virtue  of  not  being  alco- 
holic, his  first  shot  killed  one  of  his  assailants  and 
his  second  shot  wounded  the  other.  A  clear  case  of 
self-defense,  but  the  white  men  of  the  town  rode 
out  with  dogs  and  guns,  and  the  Negro  was  only 
saved  by  the  fact  that  he  fled,  covering  his  retreat 
with  his  Winchester.  For  defending  his  life  he 
had  to  leave  his  employment  and  his  home. 

But  the  local  newspaper,  anticipating  the  pos- 
sible capture  of  this  man,  prepared  in  its  very  next 
issue  a  most  perfect  case  against  the  Negro,  in 
terms  that  would  not  only  tend  to  justify  but  even 
to  inspire  his  lynching  if  caught.     The  paper  told 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  195 

how  the  Negro  had  sent  "insulting  remarks"  to 
white  men  who  had  done  nothing  to  him,  how  these 
innocent  white  men  had  gone  peaceably  to  this 
Negro  to  "talk"  the  matter  over,  and  how  the 
vicious  Negro,  without  provocation,  had  jerked 
out  his  Colt's  pistol  and  shot  one  of  the  gentlemen 
dead  before  the  unsuspecting  whites  could  even 
think  of  their  guns,  which,  by  the  way,  they  only 
accidentally  had  in  their  pockets.  Thus  the  local 
newspaper  which  controls  the  associated  press  dis- 
patches, made  out  a  most  flagrant  case  of  vicious- 
ness  and  aggression  against  the  Negro.  But  for 
the  Negro's  immedate  flight  from  the  community 
and  the  Winchester  which  he  was  reported  to  carry 
with  him,  he  would  have  been  done  to  death  before 
sundown,  and  good  white  men  away  up  in  Maine 
and  Minnesota  would  have  read  their  newspapers 
and  said:  "Too  bad,  too,  too  bad — but  what  are 
they  going  to  do  with  such  Negroes?" 

Now  for  one  or  two  little  tales  of  horror  from 
the  northeast  corner  of  Texas  and  from  famous 
old  Shreveport,  La.  These  little  stories  are  facts, 
not  fiction;  they  did  not  happen  "once  upon  a 
time"  but  most  of  them  happened  in  the  years  of 
our  Lord's  grace,  19 14  and  1915. 

The  writer  lived  for  a  while  in  the  northeast 
corner  of  Texas.  In  the  memory  of  men  who  had 
lived  there  for  a  quarter  century  no  white  man  had 
ever  been  punished  for  shooting  a  Negro,  altho 
the  killing  of  Negroes  by  mobs  or  by  individual 
white  men  is  one  of  the  commonest  criminal  occur- 
ences of  the  community.     The  Negroes  of  this 


196  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

locality  are  by  no  means  backward  or  troublesome 
or  criminal.  The  two  best  institutions  of  learn- 
ing for  Negroes  in  the  state  of  Texas  are  located 
in  this  section.  But  in  the  county  there  are  two 
blacks  to  one  white.  This  causes  the  lower  instincts 
of  the  whites  to  resent  any,  even  the  most  legiti- 
mate, effort  of  the  Negro  to  hold  up  his  head.  I 
have  found  it  to  be  the  rule  in  the  South  that  more 
meanness  and  murder  are  done  the  Negroes 
wherever  they  are  ambitious  and  outnumber  the 
whites,  causing  a  certain  element  of  whites  to  feel 
that  they  hold  their  own  position  in  the  community 
by  virtue  of  a  fraudulent  exercise  of  power. 

One  such  white  man  was  riding  around  to  hire 
some  "field  hands,"  and  came  to  a  cabin  where  a 
young  Negro  lived  and  supported  his  mother. 
The  young  man  informed  him  that  there  was  no 
one  there  but  his  mother  whom  he  supported  and 
that  he  did  not  allow  her  to  work  in  the  fields. 
Whereupon  the  white  man  remarked:  "She's  no 
more'n  any  other  damned  wench!"  The  young 
man  resented  this  insult  by  mere  verbal  protest, 
and  in  the  ensuing  quarrel  and  shooting  scrape  the 
white  man  was  killed.  When  the  mob  had  the 
rope  over  the  limb  of  a  tree,  and  all  was  ready  to 
draw  the  Negro  up  and  shoot  him,  they  first  gave 
him  a  chance  to  "speak,"  as  he  stood  with  hands 
tied  behind  him  and  the  noose  around  his  neck. 
Those  witnesses  who  were  unsympathetic  with  the 
mob,  say  that  he  began  thus :  "You  are  nothing 
but  a  lot  of  damned  cowards!  And  this  is  what 
you  call  a  white  man's  civilization,  is  it?     Hun- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  197 

dreds  of  you  with  guns,  ready  to  shoot  one  poor 
Negro  with  his  hands  tied  behind  his  back,  and  sim- 
ply because  he  defended  his  own  mother  and  his 

own  hfe ."     "Pull  him  up!"  yelled  the  mob, 

who  could  not  stand  the  sting  of  such  words. 

In  this  same  community,  a  little  colored  boy  was 
playing  with  white  children.  They  all  became 
fond  of  each  other,  and  as  children  use,  they 
kissed, — the  little  Negro  boy  finally  kissing  one 
of  the  little  girls.  These  children  were  not  old 
enough  to  be  wicked  or  to  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  the  color  hne.  But  they  were  observed  by 
some  older  person.  This  child  was  advertised  in 
the  press  as  a  "young  Negro,"  committing  "as- 
saults" upon  little  white  girls.  Finally  he  was 
taken  in  charge  by  a  mob,  marched  through  the 
streets  of  the  little  city  toward  midnight,  and 
set  on  the  top  of  a  huge  pile  of  drygoods  boxes 
and  other  combustible  material  that  had  been 
assembled  in  a  public  place  to  burn  him  alive.  It 
was  so  late  and  so  far  past  his  bedtime  that  the 
little  fellow  sat  on  top  of  the  pyre  and  nodded  in 
sleep.  This  phenomenon  touched  the  heart  of 
one  member  of  the  mob,  who  had  little  ones  at 
home,  and  he  suggested  that  the  httle  "nigger"  be 
not  burned  but  be  taught  a  lesson  in  some  other 
way.  Being  persuaded  to  mercy,  the  mob  simply 
cut  off  his  ears  and  mutilated  his  body  in  other 
unmentionable  ways  and  turned  him  over  to  his 
parents.  One  year  later  a  black  face  was  seen  to 
be  hovering  at  nightfall  about  certain  premises 
where  white  women  lived.    He  was  watched,  and 


198  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

when  he  entered,  the  mob  rushed  in,  seized  him 
and  mutilated  his  body  in  the  same  way  in  which 
they  had  mutilated  the  little  Negro  boy  twelve 
months  before.  But  when  they  brought  in  more 
light,  the  smut  was  seen  to  be  rubbing  off  the 
victim's  face.  He  was  one  of  the  young  white 
men  of  the  town.  Not  a  word  of  this  got  into 
the  associated  press. 

While  I  was  in  this  northeast  corner  of  Texas, 
so  much  hanging  and  burning  of  Negroes  without 
trial  was  going  on  in  the  neighboring  parts  of 
Louisiana,  in  and  around  Shreveport,  that  I  de- 
cided to  go  over  there  and  find  out  some  of  those 
whispered  things  which  colored  people  always 
know,  but  which  they  dare  not  tell  in  public.  The 
following  is  what  I  discovered  and  wrote  at  the 
time,  and  which  none  of  the  newspapers  to  which 
I  sent  it,  in  or  out  of  the  South,  found  it  profitable 
to  print. 

When  one  endeavors  to  find  out  the  occasion, 
motives  and  method  of  any  particular  lynching, 
he  is  impressed  with  the  difiicultness  of  the  task. 
This  is  due,  first,  to  the  fact  that  the  white  people 
who  know  about  it  are  either  too  much  interested 
or  to  indifferent  to  talk,  and,  second,  to  the  fact 
that  the  colored  people  who  know  about  it  are 
afraid  to  talk.  Fear  makes  the  colored  people 
more  absolutely  silent  than  guilt  and  indifference 
make  the  white  people.  Consequently  the  advert- 
ised reports  are  usually  endorsements  of  the 
lynchers  or  excuses  for  them.  Some  colored  men 
in  Shreveport,  La.,  tried  to  find  out  the  facts  con- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  199 

nected  with  some  of  the  numerous  lynchlngs  in 
and  around  that  city.  A  colored  man  teaches 
school  in  the  locality  where  the  aged  and  probably 
innocent  colored  man  was  burned, — and  when 
asked  to  tell  what  he  had  learned  about  it,  replied 
that  the  school  superintendent  for  his  county 
or  parish  had  ordered  him  to  keep  his  mouth  shut 
and  attend  to  his  own  business.  Fear  for  his  per- 
son and  for  his  position  reduced  him  to  silence. 

The  following,  however,  was  learned.  A  white 
storekeeper  a  little  way  out  of  Shreveport  was 
robbed  and  murdered  by  unknown  party  or  parties. 
Three  Negroes  were  arrested  on  suspicion, — the 
suspicion  being  based  solely  on  the  facts  that  they 
were  customers  of  the  murdered  man  and  that 
some  of  them  were  supposed  to  have  traded  at  his 
place  on  the  evening  before  he  was  murdered. 
Then  an  aged  Negro  was  arrested, — the  suspicion 
against  him  being  based  solely  on  the  fact  that  he 
was  acquainted  with  the  white  man  and  had  some- 
times done  odd  jobs  for  him.  The  little  money  of 
which  the  murdered  man  was  robbed  seemed  to  be 
a  more  tempting  object  of  the  mob's  pursuit  than 
was  anything  else,  and  for  some  reason  the  old 
man  was  suspected  of  knowing  the  probable  where- 
abouts of  the  cash.  A  detective  was  jailed  with  the 
old  man,  and  playing  the  part  of  another  wronged 
prisoner  he  wormed  himself  thoroughly  into  the 
old  man's  confidence,  but  only  secured  from  him 
a  stout  denial  of  any  connection  with  or  knowledge 
of  the  murder.  This  seemed  to  prove  even  to  the 
sheriff  that  the  old  man  was  innocent, — for  when 


200  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

a  Negro  is  arrested  under  such  circumstances  it  is 
his  innocence  and  not  his  guilt  that  must  be  proven. 
The  sheriff  is  reported  to  have  said :  I  believe  the 
old  man  is  innocent  and  I  am  going  to  take  him 
to  Shreveport  and  put  him  into  jail  there  for  safe- 
keeping, but,  "you  all  can  have  those  other  three 
Negroes."  Whether  he  said  this  or  not,  this  he 
did :  he  took  the  old  man  to  Shreveport  and  left  the 
other  three  who  were  promptly  lynched. 

But  the  mob  did  not  agree  with  the  sheriff :  the 
mob  did  not  think  that  a  Negro  who  had  committed 
the  awful  crime  of  being  arrested  under  suspicion 
of  having  known  about  the  hiding  place  of  the 
money  of  a  murdered  white  man  should  be  let  off, 
— even  if  he  seemed  not  to  know.  So  after  lynch- 
ing the  other  three  the  mob  marched  into  Shreve- 
port, was  joined  by  some  of  the  gallant  citizens  of 
that  place,  broke  into  the  jail,  took  the  old  man 
out,  and  in  order  to  repay  him  for  the  extra  trouble 
to  which  he  had  put  them  they  gave  him  an  extra- 
horrible  lynching  in  the  style  of  being  burned  alive. 

Whether  any  of  these  men  had  any  part  in  or 
any  knowledge  of  the  murder  of  that  storekeeper, 
only  God  knows. 

It  is  significant  that  a  few  days  after  the  murder 
two  white  tramps,  accompanied  by  a  woman  in 
male  attire,  were  discovered  in  this  locality.  It 
is  further  significant  that  a  few  days  after  the 
Negroes  were  lynched  another  white  storekeeper 
near  Shreveport  was  similarly  murdered.  The 
real  murderers  had  perhaps  been  encouraged  by 
the  ease  with  which  their  tracks  were  covered  by 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  201 

the  blood  of  the  Innocent  and  helpless.  What 
happened  then?  Again  several  Negroes  were 
arrested  on  suspicion,  for  having  lived  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  murdered  man.  Lynching 
was  threatened,  but  as  the  attitude  of  the  grand 
jury  toward  the  previous  lynching  was  still  a  little 
uncertain,  the  affair  was  postponed.'  Meanwhile 
detectives  secured  what  they  called  good  evidence 
that  certain  white  neighbors  had  murdered  this 
second  man,  but  this  evidence  failed  to  convince 
the  district  attorney,  and  at  last  accounts  the  whites 
had  not  been  arrested  and  the  Negroes  had  not 
been  released. 

What  will  the  courts  do  ?  Who  runs  the  courts  ? 
Who  elects  the  courts,  and  who  will  elect  the  next 
court  if  that  court  condemns  those  lynchers?  We 
cannot  fail  to  observe  that  the  Negro  is  most 
peculiarly  helpless  where  he  is  disfranchised. 

The  coroner,  a  Jew,  is  said  to  have  reported 
that  he  saw  some  prominent  Shreveport  citizens 
emerging  from  the  woods  where  the  old  man  was 
burned,  but  not  even  the  coroner  has  dared  to 
make  those  names  public.  Some  business  men 
also  admitted  that  they  went  out  merely  to  see  and 
enjoy  the  affair,  but  that  they  were  not  personally 
acquainted  with  any  of  the  performers.  It  is  evi- 
dently very  hard  to  get  evidence  against  a  white 
man  and  very  easy  to  get  evidence  against  a  Negro, 
— and  yet  the  Negro  has  been  given  a  reputation 
for  hiding  his  criminals.  A  few  nights  after  the 
murder  of  the  second  storekeeper  a  white  girl  was 
frightened  by  some  one   at  night,  and  she  said 


202  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

that  it  was  so  dark  that  she  could  not  see  him,  but 
that  she  felt  sure  that  he  was  a  "Nigger." 

Another  case,  A  white  man  was  killed  some- 
where in  the  oil  fields  near  Shreveport  and  several 
Negroes  were  arrested  and  brought  to  Shreveport. 
Late  one  night  the  officers  were  seized  by  a  sudden 
humane  inspiration  that  the  Negroes  ought  to  be 
taken  to  Mansfield  for  safe-keeping  from  mobs. 
Those  who  know  Mansfield  say  that  it  is  a  great 
joke  to  take  a  Negro  even  from  Shreveport  to 
Mansfield  for  the  Negro's  safety.  At  any  rate  five 
miles  out  of  Shreveport  a  mob  was  waiting,  which 
took  the  Negroes  and  lynched  them.  The  officers 
were  not  hurt. 

Whether  the  officers  knew  of  the  presence  of  this 
mob,  I  do  not  know.  But  I  do  know  that  most  of 
the  Negroes  who  are  lynched  in  the  South  to-day 
pass  conveniently  through  the  hands  of  the  law 
into  the  hands  of  the  mob.  For  some  reason  mobs 
prefer  not  to  capture  Negroes  themselves,  but  to 
wait  until  the  officers  have  arrested,  disarmed  and 
tied  the  Negro  or  cooped  him  up  in  jail.  This  not 
only  undermines  the  mob's  respect  for  law,  but 
it  undermines  the  Negro's  confidence  in  the  officers 
of  the  law, — so  that  there  is  surely  coming  into  the 
hearts  of  sound,  sensible,  peace-loving  colored 
folk  in  the  South  a  conviction  that  in  all  cases  of 
color-line  troubles  the  officer  is  but  the  agent  of 
the  mob.    This  is  a  planting  of  "dragon's  teeth!" 

It  is  seen  that  none  of  these  seven  or  eight  mur- 
dered Negroes  had  done  any  kind  of  personal 
wrong  to   any  woman.      Readers    of  the   Crisis, 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  203 

which  has  become  the  most  reliable  authority  on 
American  Lynchings  and  other  color-line  questions, 
must  be  impressed  by  the  small  proportion  of  mob 
victims  in  any  year  who  have  done  or  who  have 
even  been  suspected  of  doing  any  wrong  to  women. 
Beyond  a  doubt,  if  the  editor  of  the  Crisis  could 
learn  the  particulars  in  each  case,  even  that  small 
percentage  would  be  greatly  reduced.  The  term 
"rape"  has  been  greatly  widened  in  the  mind  of  the 
South  where  a  black  man  and  a  white  woman  are 
concerned.  The  same  term  has  been  greatly  nar- 
rowed in  its  meaning  when  a  white  man  and  a 
colored  girl  even  in  her  earliest  'teens  are  con- 
cerned. In  the  case  of  the  black  man  and  the  white 
woman  every  possible  relation  that  involves  a  mat- 
ter of  sex  is  covered  by  the  word  "rape." 

Shreveport  furnished  a  good  example  in  the 
middle  of  the  year,  both  because  of  the  unprovable 
nature  of  the  case  and  because  of  the  savagery 
attending  the  lynching  performance.  It  seems 
that  a  colored  boy,  of  whom  no  one  reports  any 
previous  wrong,  was  the  janitor  in  a  local  theatre. 
A  white  girl  was  the  ticket-seller.  One  morning 
before  ticket-seUing  time  the  girl  came  in  while 
the  boy  was  cleaning  the  floors.  They  quarreled 
about  something.  Those  who  know  say  that  the 
boy  and  girl  were  friends,  and  that  it  was  only 
a  friends'  quarrel  in  which  the  girl  was  the  aggres- 
sor. She  was  evidently  the  aggressor,  having  gone 
in  where  the  boy  was  at  work.  Some  say  that  the 
quarrel  was  overheard,  others  say  that  she  re- 
ported it.     At  any  rate  the  boy  was  arrested  and 


204  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

jailed  for  rape.  A  great  crowd  of  men,  women 
and  children  gathered  in  the  midday,  nobody  wear- 
ing a  mask.  A  few  officers  were  there  to  protect 
the  crowd  but  evidently  not  to  interfere  with  the 
performance.  By  accident,  of  course,  the  jailer 
had  placed  the  boy  in  a  cell  by  himself  and  con- 
veniently located  so  that  no  other  prisoners  would 
be  .released  with  him.  And  by  accident  again,  the 
mob  battered  in  the  jail  walls  at  the  very  spot 
where  this  cell  was  located.  In  their  zeal  some 
cut  his  face,  stabbed  him  in  the  back  and  made 
him  a  bloody  spectacle  before  he  was  led  forth  at 
the  end  of  a  long  rope.  It  seemed  that  some  fero- 
cious wild  beast  had  been  captured.  They  led 
him  to  the  most  prominent  city  square,  and  tied 
him  to  a  telegraph  pole  near  the  court  house,  the 
temple  of  justice.  There  he  was  further  cut  and 
tortured,  while  the  women  and  children  jabbed 
him  with  their  umbrellas  and  spat  upon  him,  till 
he  died. 

The  next  thing  on  program  was  to  be  the  burn- 
ing, but  a  severe  rainstorm  prevented  this.  A  few 
days  later  one  of  the  police  officers  was  heard  to  do 
himself  credit  with  this  remark:  that  it  was  he  who 
really  forbade  the  crowd  to  drag  the  body  through 
the  streets  and  burn  it, — because  he  did  not  think  it 
would  look  nice  before  the  women  and  children. 

It  is  plain  that  those  spectacles  are  degrading 
our  white  people  and  embittering  our  colored 
people. 

This  is  the  truth  as  best  I  could  discover  it  at  the 
time.     But  who  is  going  to  tell  the  truth  about 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  205 

such  matters?  Truth  is  powerful,  but  not  when 
it  is  unknown.  Undiscovered  gold  has  no  market 
value.  It  would  make  a  great  difference  in 
America  if  only  these  things  could  be  rightly  re- 
ported and  represented.  For  white  men  and  black 
men  are  alike  human,  and  the  truth  would  influence 
them.  But  the  telling  of  the  truth  is  not  a  profit- 
able business  for  any  paper  now.  It  will  have  to 
be  done  largely  as  a  missionary  work,  as  a  phil- 
anthropy, through  some  such  organization  as  the 
National  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Colored  People  and  its  organ,  the  Crisis.  It 
will  have  to  be  paid  for  largely  by  the  Negroes 
themselves,  but  by  white  people  also.  On  the  race 
question  the  average  newspaper  does  not  take  up 
the  facts  and  draw  the  necessary  conclusion  from 
those  facts.  That  is  ordinary  logic;  but  logic 
does  not  work  that  way  on  the  Negro.  Just  as 
there  are  colored  schools,  colored  churches, 
colored  cars  and  colored  wages,  there  is  also  a 
colored  logic,  which  interested  parties  use  when 
they  reason  about  the  Negro :  in  which  they  take 
the  conclusion  first,  and  then  go  hunting  for  facts 
that  are  agreeable  to  that  conclusion.  There 
is  need  of  organized  propaganda  to  make  the 
truth  known  along  the  color  line.  The  best  pro- 
tection of  wickedness  is  the  darkness,  its  worst 
enemy  is  the  light. 


THE    ULTIMATE    EFFECTS 
OF  SEGREGATION 

From  a  moral  point  of  view  the  Negro  question 
is  the  most  important  question  before  the  American 
people.  And  in  the  long  run  the  morale  of  a  nation 
will  be  chief  among  the  factors  of  its  destiny.  In 
none  of  our  problems  is  there  more  need  of  the 
scientific  spirit,  which  seeks  the  facts,  all  of  the 
facts,  and  faces  the  full  meaning  of  those  facts, 
regardless  of  prejudice  or  preconception. 

One  of  the  greatest  defects  in  the  reasoning  of 
many  who  have  dealt  with  this  problem  is  the  lack 
of  adequate  knowledge  of  the  Negro's  real  inter- 
est, motives  and  opinions.  On  this  question  it  is 
very  probable  that  colored  people  know  the  opin- 
ions of  white  people  much  better  than  white  people 
know  the  opinions  of  colored  people  :  The  Negro 
reads  the  white  man's  opinion  in  the  daily,  weekly 
and  monthly  press;  he  hears  it  reiterated  in  the 
debates  of  Congress  and  in  a  dozen  state  legis- 
latures; he  hears  the  white  man  talk  much  oftener 
than  the  white  man  hears  him  talk.  The  inevitable 
result  is  that  the  Negro  knows  his  own  opinion 
and  the  white  man's  too, — while  the  white  man 
as  a  rule  knows  only  his  own  opinion.  This  lack 
of  contemporary  knowledge  concerning  the  Negro 
causes   many   white    speakers  to    appeal   to    far- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  207 

fetched  evidence,  even  to  the  foreordainments  of 
providence :  ever  since  my  childhood  I  have  heard 
it  said  that  providence  ordained  the  Negro  for 
such-and-such  a  destiny,  and  that  God  created 
the  Negro  to  be  so-and-so.  I  learned  later  that 
the  creation  antedates  all  history  and  all  human 
experience,  so  that  its  facts  and  motives  are  inad- 
missible evidence.  My  faith  has  been  further 
shaken  by  the  gradual  discovery  that  those  who 
quote  providence  are  almost  without  exception  the 
Negro's  most  active  enemies, — and  the  Negro 
should  be  very  suspicious  of  a  providence  that 
reveals  its  will  concerning  him  only  to  his  enemies. 
In  our  present  discussion  we  aim  to  state  plainly 
the  ultimate  meaning  of  segregation  and  discrim- 
ination in  the  life  of  the  American  Negro ;  and  we 
make  less  appeal  to  providences,  which  we  under- 
stand not,  than  to  the  evidences  of  our  senses,  and 
to  the  ordinary  everyday  arguments  of  justice  and 
humanity. 

The  Negro  Opposes 
Jim  Crow  Cars, 
Residential  Segregation, 
Civil  Service  Segregation, 
Separate  School  Laws,  in  large  Nothern  cities 

with  large  Negro  population. 
And  Laws  Forbidding  the  Intermarriage  of 
the  Races,  in  places  where  such  prohibition 
has  not  heretofore  been  established. 
And   finally,   the   Negro   wants   full,   voting 
citizenship. 
How  many  of  the  Negro's  friends  know  the 


208 


THE  NEW  NEGRO 


motives  behind  his  attitude  ?  I  admit  that  I  have 
great  patience  with  those  who  are  shocked  at  his 
position  on  the  intermarriage  question,  and  that  is 
just  why  I  shall  state  plainly  the  motives  which 
hold  the  Negro  to  this  position,  so  that  his  sincere 
friends  may  judge  for  themselves  whether  there 
be  any  justice  in  his  contention.  I  have  learned 
through  my  acquaintance  with  some  of  these 
friends  that  the  shock  which  they  feel  arises  not 
from  the  Negro's  real  motives,  which  they  know 
not,  but  from  motives  which  their  own  imagina- 
tions postulate  in  the  Negro.  I  have  even  seen 
some  shocked  in  the  opposite  direction  when  they 
first  saw  the  thing  from  the  Negro's  standpoint. 

But  first  as  to  separate  railway  cars.  The 
Negro  opposes  them,  and  the  real  motive  of  his 
opposition  is  wrongly  assumed  to  be  a  desire 
to  ride  with  white  people.  The  fact  is  ignored 
that  on  every  separate  car  system  white  people 
are  given  superior  accommodations  and  black 
people  are  given  inferior  accommodations.  Re- 
verse the  conditions  and  black  people  would  prefer 
Ito  ride  with  black  people, — and  some  white  people 
'would  too.  In  Europe  there  are  first,  second  and 
third  class  accommodations  on  the  railroads.  In 
America  the  difference  between  white  and  black 
accommodations  is  often  as  great  as  the  difference 
between  first  and  third  class  in  Europe, — but  in 
Europe  the  fares  are  as  different  as  the  accom- 
modations, while  in  America  the  fares  are  the  same. 
Now  let  an  American  white  man  imagine  that  in 
Europe  he  is  compelled  to  ride  in  third  class  but 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  209 

to  pay  for  first  class,  while  all  other  travelers,  even 
yellow  and  black,  are  admitted  to  first  class  for 
the  same  fares.  When  he  opposed  this  arrange- 
ment as  legalized  robbery,  what  a  joke  It  would 
be  for  the  yellow  and  black  folks  to  ask,  "Why 
do  you  want  to  get  away  from  your  own  people?" 
The  truth  is,  he  would  want  to  get  away  from  that 
injustice  and  carry  all  of  his  "own  people"  away 
with  him. 

But  suppose  the  Negro  were  given  absolutely 
equal  accommodations,  what  then?  That  would 
be  a  decent  supposition  if  human  nature  and  all  of 
the  facts  were  not  against  it:  nowhere  in  the  whole 
separate  car  system  has  there  ever  been  systematic 
equality  of  accommodations.  In  the  majority  of 
cases  colored  men  and  women  are  put  into  one  end 
of  a  smoker,  not  always  fully  screened  off  from 
smoking  white  passengers.  This  is  just  as  if  the 
law  required  white  people  and  black  people  to  pay 
three  dollars  for  each  pair  of  shoes,  but  allowed 
the  merc^hant  to  sell  the  Negro,  for  his  three  dol- 
lars, shoes  that  were  worth  only  one  dollar.  In 
that  case  a  merchant  with  a  large  Negro  trade 
could  afford  to  sell  to  a  hard-to-please  white  cus- 
tomer shoes  actually  worth  more  than  the  three 
dollars  which  he  paid.  The  Negro  would  pay  the 
difference.  The  passenger  in  the  "jim  crow  car" 
,  supplements  the  luxury  of  the  "parlor  car," — and 
!  the  same  principle  of  Indirect  robbery  pervades  the 
whole  system  of  jim-crowism  and  segregation  in 
public  coveniences. 
I       This   glaring   financial    and   material    injustice 


2IO  THE  NEW-NEGRO 

makes  it  hardly  necessary  to  mention  the  Christian- 
democratic  argument.  But  if  a  people  were  singled 
out  from  among  all  the  other  peoples  of  the 
world  for  public  stigmatization,  that  people  could 
hardly  be  expected  to  accept  it  cheerfully  even  on 
a  plane  of  absolute  equality.  An  insignificant  right 
becomes  important  when  it  is  assailed:  you  do  not 
much  value  your  right  to  walk  the  streets  bare- 
headed, but  you  would  claim  the  right  if  it  were 
denied.  If  such  a  right  were  successfully  denied, 
the  more  vital  rights  would  be  exposed  to  attack. 
Now,  as  to  segregating  Negroes  into  restricted 
areas  of  our  cities.  Why  are  Negroes  not  willing 
to  live  by  themselves?  To  live  by  themselves 
would  be  more  comfortable  for  the  Negroes,  all 
other  things  being  equal.  But  there's  the  "rub:" 
all  other  things  are  not  equal  and  will  not  be,  wher- 
ever segregation  opens  the  door  and  lays  the  temp- 
tation to  inequality.  To  make  segregation  just,  con- 
ditions would  have  to  be  equal;  especially  would 
the  Negro's  representation  in  the  government  have 
to  be  made  consistent  with  his  ratio  of  human  inter- 
ests: to  make  segregation  impartial  in  Mississippi 
every  other  alderman  or  commissioner  should  be  a 
Negro,  every  other  governor,  every  other  legis- 
lator, every  other  tax  officer,  and  by  all  means 
every  other  member  of  whatever  board  or  commis- 
sion might  have  charge  of  public  improvements. 
We  speak  now  of  segregation  by  law;  segregation 
in  fact  has  existed  since  the  day  of  the  "slave 
quarters."  Since  emancipation  this  segregation  has 
been  more  or  less  continued  by  buying  out  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  211 

Negro,  outwitting  his  ignorance,  and  even  by  vio- 
lently forcing  him  out.  But  against  this  economic 
and  brute-force  opposition  the  Negro  had  hope, 
based  on  at  least  a  fighting  chance.  He  could 
"fight  It  out  on  this  line,"  if  It  took  generations. 
But  the  opponent,  in  spite  of  his  overwhelming 
advantages  In  the  struggle,  has  appealed  for  laws 
that  will  eliminate  the  Negro  from  the  contest 
altogether. 

/  And  why  does  the  Negro  oppose  legal  segrega- 
tion? Because  a  generation  of  experience  has 
taught  him  the  meaning  of  successful  segregation : 
a  general  absence  of  Improvements  In  the  Negro 
sections, — sometimes  no  pavements,  no  lights,  no 
sewers,  and  no  police  protection  against  brothels 
and  saloons.  The  Negro  section  Is  equally  taxed: 
They  must  pay  taxes  on  all  the  city  improvements 
and  bonded  Indebtedness.  This  Injustice  Is  simi- 
tar to  that  Imposed  by  the  jIm-crow  car,  for  the 
Negro  is  constantly  paying  to  Improve  other  peo- 
ple's property.  If  he  could  live  on  any  street 
anywhere,  this  discrimination  would  be  Impossible; 
but  legal  separation  is  a  devil  which  drags  In  Its 
tall  a  host  of  petty  discriminations.  Some  fail  to 
see  the  difference  between  segregation  by  law  and 
the  actual  segregation  which  already  exists  In  all 
cities  where  there  is  a  large  number  of  Negroes. 
But  there  is  a  vast  difference;  under  the  present 
system  the  Negro  has  at  least  one  chance, — he 
can  persuade  the  authorities  to  improve  his  section, 
to  provide  lights,  sewers  and  police  protection;  for 
in  order  to  persuade  him  to  stay  where  he  is,  they 


212  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

must  make  the  necessary  Improvements  at  least. 
But  if  he  be  shut  in  by  the  bars  of  legislation  he 
will  lose  the  advantage  of  even  this  mutual 
persuasion. 

To  ask  the  Negro  to  accept  this  ghetto  and  do 
these  things  for  himself,  would  be  a  capital  joke 
if  it  were  not  so  serious  a  matter.  The  Negro 
could  only  do  that  if  his  section  were  set  apart 
as  an  independent  municipality,  with  its  own  mayor 
and  government  and  the  control  over  its  own  taxes, 
— and  this  will  not  be  allowed.  But,  says  the  oppon- 
ent, the  law  is  just  and  equal  and  constitutional, 
is  it  not?  It  does  not  discriminate:  it  says  that 
blacks  shall  not  move  in  where  there  is  a  majority 
of  whites,  but  it  also  says  that  whites  shall  not  move 
in  where  there  is  a  majority  of  blacks.  That  is 
constitutional  in  letter  and  equal  in  phraseology, 
but  I  believe  it  is  unconstitutional  in  spirit  and  I 
know  it  is  unequal  in  effect.  The  effect  of  a  law  and 
v'not  its  rhetorically  balanced  phrases,  should  be 
the  test  of  its  constitutionality.  It  may  be  literally 
constitutional  to  make  a  law  that  the  rich  shall 
not  lend  to  the  poor,  nor  the  poor  to  the  rich, — 
that  the  intelligent  shall  not  teach  the  Ignorant,  nor 
the  ignorant  the  intelligent.  It  should  not  make  a 
law  constitutional  to  thus  simply  convert  its  terms 
in  successive  phrases.  The  segregation  law  in 
effect  means  that  those  who  have  no  homes  shall 
not  acquire  homes  of  those  who  have  homes;  and 
aspires  to  constitutionality  by  adding  that  those 
who  have  homes  shall  also  not  acquire  homes 
of  those  who  have  them  not.     The  segregation 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  213 

law  is  an  effort  to  keep  the  Negro  and  the  white 
man  where  they  now  are;  but  it  always  looks 
suspicious  for  the  fellow  who  has  a  tremendous 
advantage  to  try  to  make  a  hard  and  fast  law  to 
forever  maintain  the  status  quo! 

As  to  civil  service  segregation.  The  Negro's 
opposition  to  this  type  of  discrimination,  which  is 
new,  is  not  based  directly  on  experience;  but  is 
based  indirectly  on  his  experience  with  other  forms 
of  segregation.  But  his  reasoning  by  analogy  is 
being  justified:  in  the  Carolinas,  as  soon  as  it 
proved  possible  to  segregate  the  Negro  railway 
mail  clerks,  on  one  line  they  were  given  the  hardest 
runs  and  put  on  mostly  at  night;  when  bathroom 
segregation  appeared  in  one  of  the  departments 
at  Washington,  it  proved  convenient  to  assign  the 
colored  women  a  toilet  that  faced  the  one  assigned 
to  white  men.  Nowhere  in  this  country  have  the 
results  of  segregation  inspired  the  Negro  with  the 
hope  of  a  "square  deal." 

The  undermining  of  the  democratic  foundation 
principles  of  a  great  government  may  be  even 
more  serious  than  the  injury  done  the  Negro  in 
particular,  but  in  this  discussion  we  are  taking  up 
only  the  Negro's  independent  case  against  segrega- 
tion policies. 

The  separate  school  and  intermarriage  questions 
come  up  chiefly  in  Northern  communities  where 
there  is  not  yet  a  rigid  opinion  on  these  matters. 
Let  us  feel,  if  we  can,  as  if  we  have  no  interest 
in  the  whole  matter  and  are  now  examining  the 
Negro's  side  of  it  for  the  first  time, — not  what 


214  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

others  said  about  him,  but  what  the  Negro  says 
for  himself. 

The  Negroes  in  Northern  communities  are  gen- 
erally opposed  to  the  separate  school  idea  and 
face  the  usual  accusation  that  they  "do  not  want 
to  associate  with  their  own  people,"  which  ignores 
the  more  positive  reason  which  the  Negro  himself 
advances, —  the  universal  tempation  and  tendency 
of  the  school  authorities  to  degrade  the  Negro 
schools  wherever  they  have  been  successfully 
segregated.  The  separate  system  prevails  in  the 
South,  and  in  many  of  those  states  the  neglect  of 
the  Negro  school  is  a  disgrace  to  civilization. 
Besides,  there  is  perhaps  not  a  state  in  the  Union, 
certainly  not  in  the  South,  with  a  segregated 
school  system  which  gives  the  Negro  an  absolutely 
equal  chance  for  public  education.  The  legislature 
may  determine  the  amount  to  be  appropriated  by 
a  per  capita  reckoning  including  black  and  white, 
but  when  this  appropriation  is  expended  the  Negro 
child  may  get  only  one  dollar  out  of  eight  or  ten, 
on  the  same  per  capita  basis.  By  having  been  ac- 
counted equal  for  appropriation  purposes  he  has 
helped  the  white  child  to  a  per  capita  expenditure 
that  is  higher  than  the  per  capita  appropriation. 
I  heard  a  state  supervisor  of  education  say  to 
Negroes  that  whenever  retrenchment  was  neces- 
sary the  Negro's  share  was  always  trimmed  down 
first.  He  said  that  the  white  officers  dislike  to  do 
this,  but  he  defended  it  on  the  plea  of  "human  na- 
ture." Perhaps  the  Northern  Negro  who  opposes 
the  separate  school  movement,  has  reckoned  on 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  215 

this  same  human  nature  and  has  little  hope  that 
mere  geography  will  modify  it.  He  knows  that 
where  black  and  white  ^attend  the  same  school  this 
discrimination  is  forever  impossible.  The  Negro 
pays  an  equal  rate  of  direct  school  taxes,  and 
where  other  forms  of  discrimination  exist,  hke  jim 
crow  cars  and  exorbitant  rents,  he  pays  a  higher 
indirect  tax.  A  man  may  pay  a  tax  without  know- 
ing the  tax  exists :  the  buyer  pays  the  seller, — the 
consumer  pays  the  retailer.  Besides,  a  percentage 
paid  out  of  poverty  means  more  as  a  sacrifice  than 
the  same  percentage  paid  out  of  wealth.  By  the 
law  of  marginal  utilities,  ten  per  cent  to  the  pos- 
sessor of  a  few  hundred  dollars  may  mean  more 
than  ten  per  cent  to  the  possessor  of  thousands. 

Cincinnati,  Washington  and  St.  Louis  have  the 
best  separate  schools  for  the  Negro  in  the  United 
States,  and  it  is  significant  that  the  percentage  of 
attendance  of  colored  children  at  these  schools  is 
lower  than  at  the  mixed  schools  of  Boston,  Cleve- 
land and  New  York.  The  percentages  of  attend- 
ance of  Negro  children  from  ten  to  fourteen  years 
of  age  are  these — 

In  the  segregated  school:  Cincinnati,  93.1; 
Washington,  90.5;  St.  Louis,  89.4. 

In  the  mixed  schools:  Boston,  95;  Cleveland, 
94;  New  York  City,  93.1. 

These  figures  made  from  the  United  States  Cen- 
sus, Indicate  at  least  that  even  the  best  separate 
schools  are  unfavorable  to  the  attendance  of  col- 
ored children.  The  figures  for  divisions  and  states 
show  that  the  percentage  of  the  Negro's  school 


2i6  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

attendance  is  higher  in  the  schools  that  are  open 
to  all  than  in  the  segregated  schools.  It  is  not  to 
be  supposed  that  colored  children  simply  enjoy 
going  to  school  with  white  children,  where  in 
fact  they  are  often  woefully  ostracized,  but  it  is 
rather  to  be  supposed  that  the  white  school  attracts 
colored  people  for  the  same  reason  why  it  would 
attract  any  people,  because  of  its  superior  location 
and  equipment.  The  low  pubhc  school  atten- 
dance of  colored  children  in  the  South  is  largely 
due  to  the  inconveniently  located  and  miserably 
equipped  school  houses. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  most  interesting  ques- 
tion of  all, — the  one  on  which  more  passion  is  felt, 
more  opinions  expressed  and  less  investigation  and 
thought  are  put  than  on  any  of  the  others.  Why 
under  heaven  do  Negroes  oppose  laws  forbidding 
white  to  marry  colored  and  colored  to  marry 
white  ?  Is  it  not  simply  because  the  Negro  wants 
to  marry  a  white  person?  Some  say,  the  Negro 
may  be  right  on  other  questions,  but  surely  he 
is  wrong  here :  this  law  cannot  possibly  discrimi- 
nate, it  always  concerns  both  a  white  and  a  col- 
ored person,  and  squares  absolutely  with  the  14th 
and  15th  amendments.  Let  us  see  if  the  Negro 
has  any  decent  motive  to  state  for  himself.  The 
literal  constitutionality  of  such  a  law  must  be 
admitted;  it  would  also  be  constitutional  to  make 
a  law  to  hang  children  of  six  years  or  to  grant 
divorces  for  poorly  prepared  meals, — but  it 
would  not  be  humane  or  wise.  It  would  be  a  mad 
legislature  that  considered  only  the  constitutional- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  217 

ity  of  a  bill;  bare  constitutionality  is  no  proof  of 
its  wisdom,  its  morality  or  its  justice.  The  ulti- 
mate test  of  a  law  is  its  effect, — and  the  Negro 
/  claims  that  the  effect  of  a  law  forbidding  inter- 
/  marriage  is  to  lower  the  status  of  colored  women, 
'/without  raising  the  status  of  white  women,  and 
that  it  protects  and  fosters  miscegenation  and  bas- 
tardyw  Such  a  law  promotes  the  very  thing  it  in- 
tends to  defeat,  race  intermixture,  by  giving  per- 
fect immunity  to  the  men  of  the  stronger  race. 
It  is  natural  and  logical  to  ask — Does  it  not  give 
like  immunity  to  the  men  of  the  minority  race? 
No.  For  not  since  the  foundation  of  human  so- 
ciety has  any  serious  problem  existed  between  the 
men  of  a  weaker  and  the  women  of  a  stronger 
group.  ^  The  weak  are  never  tempted  to  impose 
upon  the  strong,  and  a  prohibition  of  marriage 
simply  further  protects  the  strong  in  its  imposi- 
tions upon  the  weak,  by  nullifying  the  traditional 
rule  of  objective  morality  which  compels  the  man 
to  accept  his  mate  and  acknowledge  his  offspring. 
The  intermarriage  law  is  in  effect  a  discrimination 
against  the  women  of  the  weak.  And  wherever 
any  race  is  ninety  millions  and  rich  and  powerful, 
while  another  race  is  ten  millions  and  poor  and 
disadvantaged,  the  case  will  be  the  same. 

The  constitutionality  of  a  law,  I  suppose,  can 
be  taken  care  of  in  its  phraseology,  but  its  wisdom 
and  justification  must  exist  in  the  conditions  to 
which  the  law  is  to  apply.  This  is  the  special 
nature  of  laws  intending  to  regulate  the  relations 
of  a  stronger  and  a  weaker  group;  for  here  the 


21 8  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

actual  conditions,  the  laws  of  human  nature  and 
the  laws  of  relative  power  must  be  figured  into  a 
fair  equation.  It  is  said  to  be  one  of  the  worst 
methods  of  partiality  and  injustice  to  deliberately 
treat  unequals  as  if  they  were  equal.  A  color- 
line  law  is  not  fair  simply  because  it  has  "black" 
written  into  one  phrase  and  "white"  written  into 
the  homologous  part  of  the  next  phrase.  It  may 
be  unconstitutional  in  spirit  and  effect.  To  show 
the  insecurity  of  mere  verbal  equality:  if  the 
weaker  race  were  put  temporarily  in  charge  of 
Congress  it  might  think  out  a  law  on  this  very 
question  of  miscegenation  which  would  be  abso- 
lutely "constitutional"  in  a  literal  sense  and  yet 
bear  harder  upon  the  stronger  race — for  example, 
"Be  it  enacted  that  when  a  white  child  is  born  into 
the  colored  race,  or  a  black  child  is  born  into 
the  white  race,  the  father  of  such  child  is  to  be 
immediately  hanged."  Such  a  law  would  not  hang 
one  Negro  in  a  hundred  thousand,  and  I  know 
communities,  where  the  Negro  does  not  vote,  and 
where  such  a  law  would  be  so  unpopular  as  to 
be  overwhelmingly  defeated  in  a  referendum. 
Why  would  a  law  to  hang  the  father  work  a 
special  hardship  upon  the  white  race?  Because 
it  would  be  based  on  the  false  assumption  that 
white  men  in  general  sustain  the  same  relation  of 
innocence  to  colored  women  which  colored  men 
in  general  sustain  to  white  women.  Why,  then, 
is  a  law  forbidding  intermarriage  unjust  to  the 
colored  race?  Because  of  the  unfair  assumption 
that  colored  women  are  as  well  protected  against 


I 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  219 

the  lower  instincts  of  whites  as  white  women  are 
protected  against  the  lower  Instincts  of  blacks. 
And  "there  is  no  greater  inequality  than  the  equal 
treatment  of  unequals." 

The  primary  motive  of  the  black  man  is  not  a 
desire  for  a  mixed  family  but  for  the  protection  of 
his  own  colored  family.  He  believes  that  a  law 
to  compel  fathers  to  marry  the  mothers  would 
break  up  more  miscegenation  in  a  week  than  a 
law  prohibiting  marriage  will  break  up  in  twenty- 
five  years.  This  motive  is  proven  by  the  fact 
that  the  Negroes  who  oppose  the  prohibitive  laws 
are  already  married,  and  would  not  consent  for 
their  children  to  get  into  the  trouble  which  it  costs 
to  marry  a  white  person  in  America,  legally  or 
illegally  Again  the  Negro's  contention  is  sup- 
ported by  the  United  States  Census.  Listen, — in 
forty  years  the  mulatto  part  of  the  population  has 
increased 

In  Michigan,  where  there  are  no  laws  against 
intermarriage,  48  per  cent, 

In  Arkansas,  where  there  are  strict  prohibitive 
laws,  559  per  cent. 

It  is  further  noticeable  that  in  Indiana,  just 
over  the  line  from  the  South  and  where  a 
considerable  sentiment  is  prohibitive  of  lawful 
relations,  the  Increase  of  mulattoes  was  still 
only  107  per  cent, — while  in  South  Carolina, 
where  strict  law  is  added  to  the  most  violent  sen- 
timent, the  Increase  was  about  383  per  cent.  In 
whatever  way  the  figures  for  mulattoes  are 
manipulated,    they   always   tell   the    same    story: 


220  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

namely,  that  there  is  more  miscegenation  in  those 
states  which  degrade  their  colored  women  by  laws 
forbidding  intermarriage  than  in  the  states  which 
offer  equal  protection  to  all  women.  This  appears 
whether  we  consider  the  mulattoes  in  the  rate 
of  their  own  increase  or  in  their  increasing  pro- 
portion to  the  whole  Negro  population.  The 
law  seems  to  help  the  violator  of  "race  integrity;" 
for  the  mulatto  is  not  a  theory,  he  is  a  fact.  Ac- 
cording to  these  figures,  while  one  mulatto  is  being 
added  to  a  given  number  of  Negroes  in  Michigan, 
about  twelve  mulattoes  are  being  added  to  the 
same  number  of  Negroes  in  Arkansas.  And  the 
still  more  impressive  consideration  is,  that  the  one 
mulatto  in  Michigan  may  be  legitimate,  while  the 
twelve  mulattoes  in  Arkansas  must  be  illegitimate. 
Which  would  civilization  choose?  Which  should 
the  opponent  of  miscegenation  prefer?  What  is 
the  difference  between  Michigan  and  Arkansas? 
In  Michigan  the  man  of  the  stronger  race  is  faced 
by  at  least  the  legal  threat  of  compulsory  inter- 
marriage, if  he  crosses  the  line,  while  in  Arkansas 
he  is  so  far  protected  by  law.  I  ask  in  the  most 
solemn  earnestness,  might  it  not  prove  more  sob- 
ering to  a  white  youth  to  be  directly  told,  "You 
would  have  to  marry  your  colored  associate," — 
than  to  be  indirectly  informed  that  he  will  have 
immunity  in  that  case  ? 

We  have  purposely  confined  our  discussion  to 
the  Negro's  vital  interest  in  this  question,  and 
have  avoided  its  wider  phase, — the  revolutionary, 
or  the  devolutionary,  idea  of  taking  marriage,  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  221 

most  honorable  institution  of  the  human  species, 
and  putting  it  on  a  legal  plane  with  fornication, 
adultery  and  all  the  other  most  horrible  sins  cata- 
logued in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  Such  a 
subversion  of  objective  morality  may  have  far- 
reaching  consequences,  indeed,  in  which  white  and 
black  will  reap  equally. 

These  are  the  opinions  and  the  arguments  of 
practically  all  of  the  most  intelligent  Negroes  in 
the  United  States,  many  of  whom  I  Icnow  person- 
ally, and  if  they  do  not  convince  the  race's  avowed 
enemies  they  should  at  least  cause  the  impartial 
to  believe  that  the  real  motives  are  not  what  they 
are  popularly  said  to  be.  The  intelligent  Negro, 
in  his  arguments  against  segregation  and  discrimi- 
nation, seldom  sinks  to  the  level  of  mere  "social 
equality"  consideration. 

Finally,  is  the  reason  not  now  apparent  why  the 
Negro  wants  to  vote?  Is  he  after  "black  suprem- 
acy" in  a  country  where  his  ratio  is  one  to  ten  and 
growing  less  all  the  time?  Segregation  and  dis- 
crimination are  a  sufficient  justification  of  his  de- 
sire for  the  ballot;  these  evils  get  their  greatest 
support  from  disfranchisement,  and  they  vary 
directly  as  the  Negro's  unjust  exclusion  from  par- 
ticipation in  self-government.  A  minority  group 
in  a  democratic-republican  form  of  government 
needs  the  ballot  more  desperately  than  the  major- 
ity group  needs  it.  It  is  unfair  to  expect  a  white 
administration  to  protect  the  Negro  when  the 
Negro  has  been  stripped  of  his  only  power  to 
support  or  check  that  administration.     Neither 


222  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

"'lucatlon  nor  money  will  settle  the  question  with- 
-ut  the  ballot:  for  a  ballotless  group  cannot  com- 
iTiand  the  resources  of  public  education,  and  a  sub- 
ject and  helpless  class  by  growing  richer  only  en- 
dmgers  its  life  by  becoming  a  more  tempting 
,^rey  to  any  powerful  oppressor.  The  officers  of 
the  law  could  not,  if  they  would,  be  impartial  to  a 
decitizenized  people :  the  elected  are  obligated  to 
the  electors.  A  disfranchised  group  could  fare 
much  better  under  hereditary  independent  rulers 
than  under  elective  obligated  officers.  The  very 
advantages  of  a  democracy  make  disfranchise- 
ment therein  the  worst  of  tyrannies.^  This  prin- 
ciple will  be  true  as  long  as  human  nature  is  human 
and  not  divine.  The  only  way  to  insure  the  Negro 
against  injustice  in  other  particulars  is  to  remove 
the  most  effective  defense  of  injustice, — dis- 
/  criminatory  disfranchisement.  The  Negro  does 
not  object  to  impartial  disfranchisement,  incident 
upon  a  failure  to  meet  prescribed  and  attainable 
qualifications;  the  white  man  may  prescribe  a  col- 
lege education,  if  he  deem  it  reasonable  and  make 
it  impartial.  Besides,  the  white  population  out- 
numbers the  Negro  population  ten  to  one,  and 
according  to  the  census  it  is  outgrowing  the  Negro 
population  by  immigration  and  natural  increase; 
so  that  the  statesman  does  not  have  to  look  out  for 
"white  supremacy," — the  history  of  three  hun- 
dred years  has  already  looked  out  for  that.  What 
the  statesman  does  need  to  look  out  for  is  justice 
to  the  Negro  and  the  avoidance  of  national  moral 
degeneration  because  of  injustice  to  the  Negro. 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  223 

Impartial  suffrage  cannot  mean  "black  suprem- 
acy" in  America,  but  would  mean  healthier  self- 
government  by  giving  the  Negro  here  and  there 
a  better  chance  to  speak  for  himself  and  locally 
to  defend  his  nearest  and  dearest  interests.  Sup- 
pose the  Negro  should  be  given  his  full  ratio  in 
the  Congress  of  the  United  States:  at  present 
there  would  be  one  Negro  congressman  to  nine 
white  congressmen.  What  could  the  white  lose? 
Nothing.  They  would  still  have  the  vote  and  the 
real  power.  But  what  would  all  gain,  white  and 
black  alike?  The  blacks  would  gain  voice,  hope, 
a  high  sense  of  American  justice,  patriotism, — 
civilization.  And  the  white  would  gain  a  sounder 
knowledge  of  the  Negro's  condition,  needs, 
thoughts  and  aims,  so  that  on  bills  affecting  the 
interests  of  the  Negro  race  the  white  majority 
would  vote  more  wisely  than  it  now  votes.  One 
of  the  greatest  handicaps  to  our  mutual  adjust- 
ment is  the  American  white  man's  general  ignor- 
ance of  the  Negro  race. 


THE  NEW  NEGRO 

What  I  aspired  to  be, 

And  was  not,  comforts  me  : 

A  brute  I  might  have  been,  but  would  not  sink  i'  the  scale. 

— From  Browning's  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra." 

The  "new  Negro"  is  not  really  new:  he  ir,  the 
same  Negro  under  new  conditions  and  subjected 
to  new  demands.  Those  who  regret  the  passing 
of  the  "old  Negro"  and  picture  the  "new"  as 
something  very  different,  must  remember  that 
there  is  no  sharp  hne  of  demarcation  between  the 
old  and  the  new  in  any  growing  organism  like  a 
germ,  a  plant  or  a  race.  The  present  generation 
of  Negroes  have  received  their  chief  heritage 
from  the  former  and,  in  that,  they  are  neither 
better  nor  worse,  higher  nor  lower  than  the  previ- 
ous generation.  But  the  present  Negro  is  differ- 
ently circumstanced  and  must  be  measured  by  dif- 
ferent standards.  He  has  not  less  fidelity  to 
duty  than  had  the  old  Negro :  the  present  Negro 
soldier  is  just  as  true  to  his  uniform,  his  flag  and 
his  country  as  was  the  old  Negro  slave  to  his 
master's  family.  He  is  not  more  indolent:  cer- 
tainly the  present  Negro  does  a  great  deal  more 
of  voluntary  work  than  did  the  Negro  slave.  He 
is  not  as  much  more  criminal  than  the  old  Negro 
as  his  criminal  record  would  seem  to  indicate :  the 
present   Negro    gets    into    jail    for    offenses    and 

224 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  225 

charges  for  which  the  slave  received  thirty-nine 
unrecorded  lashes.  Besides,  a  repressive  attitude 
toward  a  man  in  freedom  subjects  him  to  worse 
temptations  than  a  bond-slave  is  subjected  to. 
Furthermore  and  quite  as  important  as  anything 
else,  there  has  been  some  change  of  attitude  in 
the  white  people  among  whom  the  Negro  lives: 
there  is  less  acquaintanceship, — less  sympathy  and 
toleration  than  formerly. 

The  average  white  man  of  the  present  genera- 
tion who  sees  the  Negro  daily,  perhaps  knows  less 
of  the  Negro  than  did  the  similarly  situated  white 
man  of  any  previous  generation  since  the  black 
race  came  to  America.  This  lack  of  knowledge 
has  a  fearful  influence  on  the  judgment:  it  is  both 
history  and  psychology  that  where  knowledge  is 
wanting,  imagination  steps  in.  What  naive  ex- 
planations men  once  gave  of  natural  phenomena, 
what  odd  shapes  they  ascribed  to  the  earth,  and 
what  erroneous  proportions  and  fanciful  rela- 
tions they  imagined  among  the  heavenly  bodies. 
The  most  serious  handicap  to  the  creation  of  a 
wholesome  public  opinion  on  matters  affecting  the 
Negro,  is  the  ignorance  of  the  better  class  of  white 
people  concerning  the  better  class  of  colored  peo- 
ple who  live  in  their  community.  They  often 
know  the  other  classes :  the  servants  through  their 
kitchens  and  the  criminals  through  the  news- 
papers. In  a  large  Southern  city  lived  the  most 
experienced  Negro  banker  in  the  United  States, 
with  his  bank,  for  twenty-five  or  thirty  years ;  but, 
excepting  the  few  bankers  and  others  with  whom 


226  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

he  came  into  business  contact,  practically  the 
whole  group  of  intelligent  white  people  in  that  city 
were  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  this  Negro  existed. 
In  another  Southern  town  of  seven  thousand  peo- 
ple, half  white  and  half  colored,  an  elderly,  cul- 
tured, Christian  white  woman,  who  had  lived 
there  all  here  life,  did  not  know  that  the  Negroes 
were  not  given  a  public  school  building  by  her 
municipahty,  and  had  supposed  that  a  primary 
school  for  Negroes  which  had  been  maintained  by 
a  missionary  society  for  thirty  or  forty  years,  was 
the  Negro  public  school.  From  an  old  Maryland 
community  a  young  Negro  went  out,  got  an  edu- 
cation in  some  of  the  best  schools,  took  a  course 
in  theology  at  Yale,  and  then  returned  to  that 
community  to  pastor  a  church.  He  worked  with 
great  energy,  aroused  his  people  to  build  a  fine 
new  church,  and  awakened  so  much  enthusiasm 
in  the  colored  masses  that  finally  some  inklings  of 
his  success  trickled  in  behind  the  ivied  walls  of  an 
old  mansion  where  lived  two  wealthy  white  ladies 
of  the  "good  old  days,"  when  the  Negro  was  so 
much  better  than  he  is  now,  as  they  could  well  tes- 
tify from  the  superb  character  of  the  "black 
mammy,"  now  dead  and  gone,  but  who  had  been 
for  many  years  an  indispensable  part  of  their 
household  conveniences.  Hearing  of  the  fine  new 
building,  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives  they  de- 
cided to  attend  the  dedication  of  a  Negro  church. 
On  learning  the  name  and  antecedents  of  the  young 
pastor  they  found  him  to  be  the  son  of  their  be- 
moaned "black  mammy," — him  whom  they  sup- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  227 

posed  had  long  since  gone  to  the  dogs,  whither 
their  daily  newspapers  were  saying  all  the  young 
and  aspiring  Negroes  were  bound.  The  mother 
had  been  a  "member"  of  their  family,  but  the  son 
had  struggled  against  poverty  and  prejudice,  had 
got  his  education  and  done  his  work  without  any 
encouragement  from  them,  without  even  so  much 
as  their  confidence  or  their  knowledge.  How  can  a 
people  so  hedged  about  by  tradition  and  handi- 
capped by  prejudice  "know  the  Negro"  as  he  now 
is,  even  though  they  be  good  people  and  knew  him 
as  he  once  was? 

Not  only  does  this  ignorance  of  the  Negro 
prevent  many  white  people  from  sympathizing 
with  his  condition  and  struggles,  but  it  does  a 
mischief  more  positive  than  that:  it  prepares 
them  to  believe  any  charge  of  crime  or  viciousness 
or  depravity  which  may  be  brought  against  the 
race.  They  will  not  analyze  the  evidence.  If  it 
is  said  that  in  proportion  to  their  population  there 
are  four  or  five  times  as  many  blacks  as  whites  in 
a  Southern  penitentiary,  men  will  conclude  at  once, 
without  thought  or  investigation,  that  such  is  the 
ratio  of  the  criminality  of  the  Negro  and  the 
white  man.  They  overlook  the  multitude  of  other 
differences  which  may  account  for  this  difference 
in  criminal  statistics:  the  poverty,  the  ignorance, 
the  homelessness  and  helplessness,  and  the  very 
sort  of  prejudice  which  they  themselves  are  sub- 
stituting for  thought.  The  ease  with  which  a 
Negro  can  be  lynched  in  the  South  schould  make 
them  know  how  much  more  easily  he  can  get  into 


228  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  penitentiary.  Another  thing  that  largely  ac- 
counts for  the  Negro's  superior  numbers  among 
the  prisoners :  most  Southern  states  allow  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  court  a  very  wide  latitude  as  to  the 
number  of  years  for  which  the  condemned  is  to 
be  sentenced.  The  law  is  often  like  this:  a  fine 
of  so  many  dollars,  or  ten  years  in  prison,  or  both. 
The  Negro  usually  gets  the  limit,  perhaps  "both." 
To  make  an  extreme  but  simplifying  case,  suppose 
one  Negro  and  one  white  man  commit  a  certain 
crime  every  year;  if  the  white  criminal  is  either 
fined  or  given  only  one  year  in  prison,  while  the 
colored  criminal  is  given  ten  years,  in  the  tenth 
year  when  the  visitor  goes  to  that  prison  he  will 
find  nine  or  ten  Negroes  there  for  a  certain  crime, 
but  only  one  white  man.  The  easy-going  investi- 
gator might  conclude  that  the  Negro  is  ten  times 
as  criminal  in  that  respect  as  is  the  white  man, 
while  as  a  matter  of  fact  both  races  would  have 
committed  exactly  the  same  number  of  crimes. 
The  long-term  sentences  of  Negroes  cause  them  to 
accumulate  In  prison.  There  are  much  more 
scientific  ways  of  explaining  the  Negro's  situation 
in  this  country  than  by  reference  to  an  unprovable 
something  like  Innate  depravity. 

One  of  the  greatest  handicaps  under  which  the 
new  Negro  lives  is  the  handicap  of  the  lack  of 
acquaintanceship  between  him  and  his  white 
neighbor.  Under  the  former  order,  when  prac- 
tically all  Negroes  were  either  slaves  or  servants, 
every  Negro  had  the  acquaintance  of  some  white 
man;  as  a  race  he  was  better  known,  better  under- 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  229 

stood,  and  was  therefore  the  object  of  less  su- 
spicion on  the  part  of  the  white  community.  But 
under  the  present  order  there  are  many  Negroes 
who  are  independent,  in  occupation  or  in  fortune, 
doing  business  for  themselves,  rendering  profes- 
sional service  to  their  own  race  or  living  inde- 
pendently at  home.  These  Negroes,  unknown  to 
the  white  mass,  are  the  objects  of  its  special  su- 
spicions and  distrust,  for  they  are  "something 
new  under  the  sun."  When  riots  break  out,  this 
unknown  Negro,  well-to-do  and  equally  well-be- 
haved, the  one  who  ought  to  be  safest,  is  the  one 
most  liable  to  attack  by  the  mob.  This  is  because 
ignorance  and  prejudice  have  made  the  very  things 
which  pass  for  virtues  in  white  men,  seem  like 
vices  in  the  Negro;  pride,  ambition,  self-respect, 
un-satisfaction  with  the  lower  positions  of  life, 
and  the  desire  to  live  in  a  beautiful  house  and 
to  keep  his  wife  and  children  at  home  and  out 
of  "service."  There  can  be  no  sympathy  where 
there  is  no  knowledge,  and  the  Negro  of  this  class, 
being  rather  a  stranger  to  his  white  neighbors,  is 
regarded  as  a  bad  example  to  those  humbler  and 
more  helpless  Negroes  who  are  servants.  This 
is  not  so  in  every  case,  but  this  is  the  rule,  and  the 
rule  is  the  thing.  And  we  are  not  talking  hearsay 
but  speaking  out  of  the  experiences  of  our  life- 
time. 

If  prejudice  could  only  reason,  it  would  dispel 
itself.  If  it  could  think,  its  thoughts  might  run 
like  this:  If  it  be  true  that  the  Negro  is  innately 
low  and  criminal  in  his  instincts,  then  the  Negro 


230  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

must  be  the  same  In  all  places, — but  the  Negroes 
of  other  countries  do  not  bear  this  reputation; 
those  of  Brazil  and  the  rest  of  South  America,  of 
Central  America,  of  the  West  Indies  and  of 
Mexico,  are  not  distinguished  as  criminals.  There 
are  great  numbers  of  Negroes  In  parts  of  these 
countries,  and  being  in  many  of  them  unrestricted 
as  to  the  position  to  which  they  may  aspire  in 
society  and  state,  they  would  have  a  better  chance 
to  demonstrate  any  essential  inferiority  In  those 
lands  than  in  the  United  States.  The  truth  is, 
that  If  the  Negro  be  Inferior,  in  the  United  States 
he  has  never  yet  had  a  chance  to  prove  his  inferi- 
ority. But  prejudice  does  not  investigate  or  rea- 
son.— What  we  are  trying  to  do  In  this  essay,  con- 
cerning the  new  Negro,  Is  to  tell  what  is,  and  not 
what  ouffht  to  be,  though  the  latter  would  make  a 
more  pleasing  story  than  the  former. 

Another  thing  which  gets  the  better  of  our 
normal  psychology  and  causes  us  to  believe  almost 
any  wild  report  about  the  Negro,  Is  the  free  and 
superior  advertising  given  Negro  crime  above  that^ 
accorded  to  any  other  form  of  Negro  achieve- 
ment. Booker  Washington  used  to  tell  with  great 
amusement  how  he  entered  a  little  town  and  spoke 
to  a  large  gathering,  making  as  good  a  speech  as 
he  was  capable  of.  The  next  morning  he  picked 
up  the  town  paper,  expecting  to  see  himself  and 
the  meeting  given  considerable  and  prominent 
space,  but  found  only  an  Inch  or  so  of  recognition 
on  the  last  page.  He  had  made  a  successful 
speech,  but  the  whole  front  page  was  given  to  a 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  231 

Negro  who  at  the  same  time  had  made  an  unsuc- 
cessful attempt  to  snatch  a  woman's  purse.  An 
unsophisticated  outsider,  reading  that  paper, 
would  have  concluded  that  the  constructive  work 
which  such  Negroes  as  Booker  Washington  are 
doing,  is  of  small  consequence  as  compared  with 
the  faihng  efforts  of  a  Negro  criminal.  Again, 
when  a  white  person  commits  a  crime,  the  papers 
say  simply  that  a  burglar  was  caught,  a  man  shot 
a  woman,  or  a  highwayman  has  been  sentenced, — 
not  white  burglar,  not  white  man  and  woman,  and 
not  white  highwayman.  In  the  case  of  colored 
people,  however,  it  is  reported  as  Negro  thief, 
Negro,  loafer,  black  brute,  Negress.  This  forms 
in  us  an  association  of  ideas :  black  and  Negro  are 
made  to  suggest  crime.  The  one  term  calls  up  the 
other  in  the  pubHc  mind;  they  are  tied  together  by 
as  definite  a  law  as  the  law  of  gravitation.  If  the 
word  white  were  written  with  every  Caucasian 
criminal,  it  would  be  as  bad  for  the  word  white, — 
or  worse.  We  might  say  that  we  also  give  the 
Negro  credit  for  his  good  deeds  by  attaching  the 
word  black  or  colored.  But  do  we,  with  the  same 
emphasis  and  persistence  with  which  we  link  him 
with  his  bad  deeds?  Booker  T.  Washington 
was  given  an  inch  on  the  last  page,  and  the  Negro 
purse-snatcher  was  given  the  whole  of  the  front 
page.  I  know  a  black  Negro  who  did  well  in  a 
Northern  University,  and  I  have  his  picture  from 
some  newspapers  wherein  they  deliberately  light- 
ened his  complexion,  straightened  his  hair,  peaked 
his  nose  and  labeled  him  thus  as  a  mulatto.    And 


232  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

often  we  refuse  to  mention  the  racial  Identity  at 
all  when  the  Negro's  deed  is  good.  While  we 
write,  every  newspaper  in  the  United  States  is 
mentioning  the  good  work  of  the  Tenth  Cavalry 
In  Mexico,  but  very  few  of  the  dailies  take  time 
to  say  that  the  Tenth  Cavalry  Is  a  regiment  of 
black  men.  When  the  Negro  soldiers  were  dis- 
charged for  shooting  up  Brownsville,  Tex.,  not 
a  newspaper  In  the  whole  Republic  failed  to  men- 
tion the  race  to  which  they  belonged.  Suppose 
we  pursued  the  same  policy  with  respect  to  the 
red-heads  among  us :  whenever  a  black-haired, 
brown-haired  or  gray-haired  person  committed  a 
crime,  we  should  say  simply  that  a  man  or  woman 
did  this  or  that,  but  when  the  hair  was  red,  should 
say  red-headed  burglar,  red-headed  embezzler, 
red-headed  murderer,  red-headed  rapist, — very 
soon  the  red-haired  would  be  marked  as  criminals 
among  us  and  we  should  be  prejudiced  at  the  very 
sight  of  them. 

It  is  an  Interesting  Inquiry  as  to  how  the  Negro 
stands  to-day  as  a  patriot.  In  that  regard  he  is 
still  one  of  the  soundest  classes  in  America,  but 
he  does  not  stand  to-day  where  he  used  to  stand. 
He  still  loves  America,  his  native  land, — it  is  the 
only  country  he  has  or  knows  anything  about, — 
but  he  Is  more  prone  to-day  to  identify  "the  coun- 
try" with  the  powers  who  happen,  for  the  time 
being,  to  have  control  thereof.  One  hears  expres- 
sions from  Individual  Negroes  now  which  were 
not  to  be  heard  twenty  years  ago :  that  the  United 
States  needs  humiliation;  that  it  would  "help  the 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  233 

Negro  If  any  foreign  power  should  humble  this 
country;"  that  the  Negro  has  "nothing  to  fight 
for"  in  the  United  States,  and  "nothing  to  de- 
fend;" that  he  (the  individual  who  may  be  speak- 
ing) "would  not  volunteer;"  that  it  would  be  "in- 
consistent for  the  Negro  to  fight  the  Japanese, 
who  have  done  nothing  to  him,  and  in  behalf  of 
American  white  people;"  that  no  foreign  con- 
queror could  possibly  "make  conditions  any  worse 
for  the  Negro  here;"  and  many  other  expressions 
which  show  that  the  Negro  is  beginning  to  look 
for  dehverance  from  abroad  rather  than  at  home. 
This  is  a  small  and  at  present  impotent  beginning, 
but  it  is  foreboding.  And  it  is  too  bad  that  some 
American  newspapers  and  congressmen  are  sec- 
onding these  thoughts  of  the  Negro  by  proclaim- 
ing a  "white  man's  country"  and  a  "white  man's 
war,"  and  by  obstructing  the  enlistment  of  pa- 
triotic colored  people  in  the  army  and  navy.  How 
different  is  the  present  Negro  spirit  from  that  of 
1898  when  his  youth,  wherever  admitted,  rose  as 
one  man  to  meet  the  Spaniard;  from  many  of  his 
Southern  schools  the  whole  male  student  body  who 
could  qualify  as  soldiers  went  into  the  camps. 
That  is  not  because  the  Negro  was  not  mistreated 
or  oppressed  at  that  time,  but  because  he  still 
looked  upon  "Uncle  Sam"  as  being  some  person- 
ality separate  and  apart  from  the  oppressor.  He 
then  regarded  the  oppressor  as  a  merely  local 
character;  but  he  looked  up  to  the  great  Nation 
with  hope  and  confidence,  as  the  embodiment  of 
rigid  justice  and  high  ideals.     He  thought  that 


234  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

the  spirit  of  the  Emancipator  and  of  the  defenders 
of  the  Union  still  ruled  in  the  highest  councils  of 
the  land,  and  he  swore  by  "Uncle  Sam."  He 
hoped,  too,  to  better  his  local  conditions  by  this 
opportunity  to  show  his  patriotism  at  San  Juan 
Hill  and  in  the  Philippines.  But  since  that  time 
one  or  two  weak  Republican  administrations  and 
a  very  hostile  Democratic  term  have  made  him 
identify  his  former  ideal  of  the  nation  with  the 
oppressor  himself.  This  impression  has  been 
deepened  especially  by  lynchings,  segregation  and 
discrimination  in  the  North,  from  which  he  once 
expected  ultimate  justice.  We  fear  that  the  ex- 
tent and  importance  of  this  new  feeling  is  not 
generally  understood  by  white  people.  The  foun- 
dation of  preparedness  should  be  laid  in  the  mind 
and  the  heart.  As  we  write,  the  newspapers  are 
full  of  comments  on  the  fact  that  a  little  black 
boy  of  Des  Moines,  Iowa,  refused  under  threats 
to  salute  the  American  flag,  on  the  ground  that  it 
meant  nothing  to  him  and  his.  Some  are  advocat- 
ing punishment  for  this  lad  as  the  remedy.  That 
reminds  us  of  the  "remedy"  offered  by  the  httle 
boy  who,  when  he  was  frankly  told  by  the  little 
girl  that  she  did  not  love  him,  replied,  as  he  sailed 
into  her  with  his  fists :  "When  I  get  through  beatin' 
the  stuffin'  out  o'  you,  I  bet  you'll  love  me!"  He 
was  adopting  the  method  which  would  not  only 
fail  to  change  indifference  into  love  but  would 
finally  arouse  hatred  and  hostility.  The  Negro 
will  not  fail  to  love  the  flag  and  be  its  staunchest 
defender,  if  it  means  to  him  a  reasonable  measure 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  235 

of  protection  for  life,  liberty  and  property  and 
civil  and  political  rights.  If  these  things  are 
denied  him,  no  amount  of  preaching  or  cussing  or 
killing  will  make  him  love  America.  He  could  be 
compelled  for  the  time  being  to  employ  the  weap- 
ons of  the  weak, — pretense  and  cunning. 

But  the  colored  soldier  and  the  masses  of  the 
race  are  still  loyal.  There  is  no  hyphen  in  the 
short  word  Negro;  he  is  every  inch  American; 
he  is  not  even  Afro-American.  One  Negro  regi- 
ment beat  all  records  by  not  having  a  single  de- 
sertion in  twelve  months.  Nobody  has  any  doubt 
as  to  what  the  Negro  soldiers  are  doing  in  Mexico 
now;  that  they  can  be  relied  on  implicitly  to  carry 
out  orders  and  serve  the  interests  of  the  American 
people.  During  our  strained  relations  with  vari- 
ous European  nations  there  have  been  frequent 
expressions  of  doubt  as  to  the  loyalty  of  many  ele- 
ments of  our  population,  but  never  one  word  of 
doubt  as  to  the  Negro's  loyalty  has  parted  the  lips 
of  even  his  fondest  enemies.  He  is  loyal  and  is 
understood  to  be  loyal,  but  a  continuous  adverse 
pressure  will  finally  break  even  the  strongest 
bar, — or  bend  it. 

At  present  the  Negro  would  stand  fast  and 
firm  by  America  against  any  European  state;  but 
on  the  other  hand  when  the  Negro  goes  into  any 
European  state  he  finds  himself  better  treated  and 
freer  from  insult  than  in  any  state  of  the  American 
Union.  How  long  will  his  loyalty  last  under  that 
test?  The  Negro  abroad  in  any  of  the  other 
really  civilized  countries  of  the  world,  is  practi- 


236  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

cally  never  insulted  or  treated  as  an  inferior  un- 
less he  runs  into  a  party  of  his  own  white  fellow- 
citizens  from  the  United  States.  There  are 
Americans,  of  course,  to  whom  this  inconsistent  at- 
titude toward  one  of  the  most  loyal  classes  of  all 
our  citizenry  is  a  shame  and  a  distaste. 

Naturally  it  proves  disagreeable,  at  first,  for 
many  American  white  people  to  turn  from  the  old 
to  the  new  Negro:  from  the  patient,  unquestion- 
ing, devoted  semi-slave  to  the  self-conscious,  as- 
piring, proud  young  man.  It  always  shocks  our 
psychology  to  have  our  old  and  accustomed  ideals 
contradicted.  The  changes  from  tallow  candles 
to  oil  lamps,  to  gas  lights  and  to  electric  bulbs 
must  have  been  unpleasant  experiences  for  many 
of  the  older  members  of  the  community.  The 
older  folk  did  not  want  to  put  pipe  organs  and 
other  musical  instruments  into  the  church  service. 
It  is  a  plain  matter  of  psychology:  the  old  ideal 
was  being  smashed  by  something  new,  which  is 
disagreeable  even  when  the  something  new  5s 
something  better.  Nearly  all  concede  that  there 
are  good  Negroes,  but  they  are  very  slow  to 
revise  their  ideals  as  to  what  constitutes  a  "good" 
Negro.  To  some  it  means  the  old  "uncles"  and 
"aunties"  or  the  present  usable  servants.  It  is 
difficult  for  them  to  conceive  of  an  independent, 
self-respecting,  self-directing  Negro  as  good. 
There  is  a  great  motion-picture  film,  the  chief 
fault  of  which,  aside  from  its  perversions  of  com- 
mon history,  is  the  fact  that  it  attempts  to  teach 
that  the  Negro  is  good  only  as  a  slave  or  servant, 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  237 

and  that  every  Intelligent  and  aspiring  Negro  in 
society,  law  or  state,  is  bad  and  criminal.  This 
hoary  prejudice  is  our  great  stumbling  block: 
it  causes  intolerance  and  opposition  to  the  rising 
and  aspiring  but  perfectly  human  and  normal 
younger  Negroes.  There  are  white  people,  ap- 
parently fair-minded,  who  probably  wish  the 
Negro  well,  and  who  can  stand  or  sit  and  talk  for 
a  long  time  with  a  dirty,  ignorant  and  comical 
Negro,  but  who  could  not  have  five  minutes  of 
patience  with  one  that  is  clean,  intelligent  and 
self-respecting.  I  heard  a  Negro  say  that  it 
mystified  him  how  white  people  would  hire  as 
servants  in  their  homes,  or  nurses  for  their  chil- 
dren Negro  men  and  girls  whom  he  would  not 
permit  to  touch  his  children.  In  the  other  direc- 
tion, too,  the  thing  often  runs  to  the  ridiculous: 
a  young  Negro  was  to  be  ousted  by  his  white  as- 
sociates from  a  certain  position;  they  admitted 
that  his  morals  were  sound,  that  his  education  and 
general  qualifications  were  all  right,  that  his  logic 
was  good  and  his  arguments  irrefutable, — but, 
they  explained,  when  he  talks  on  some  phases  of 
the  race  question  he  sometimes  clinches  his  teeth! 
They  evidently  preferred  that  when  he  talked  of 
the  great  injustices  he  would  not  do  what  Horace 
says  the  speaker  should  always  do  (show  the  feel- 
ing himself  which  he  would  arouse  in  others),  but 
that  he  would  rather  show  his  teeth  in  the  concilia- 
tory, apologetic  grin  of  the  old-fashioned  Negro. 

The  greatest  risk  that  the  strong  have  to  run  is 
the  risk  of  their  morals  and  ideals.     The  white 


238  THE  NEW  NEGRO 

people  of  America  are  In  a  position  to  be  greatly 
tempted  to  regard  the  Negro  only  in  the  Hght 
of  his  usefulness  to  them, — only  as  a  utility,  and 
not  as  a  personality  to  pursue  his  own  ends  and 
fulfil  his  own  destiny.  This  little  drop  of  selfish- 
ness is  likely  to  vitiate  a  great  many  efforts  "on 
behalf  of  the  American  Negro."  The  Negro 
is  beginning  to  insist,  however,  that  he  must  be 
regarded  first  as  a  man  and  only  incidentally  as  a 
usable  article.  For  example,  the  Negro  really 
beHeves  in  all  kinds  of  education,  and  especially 
in  those  forms  of  training  which  will  best  fit  the 
masses  to  become  independent  workers  and  of 
the  greatest  service  to  themselves  and  others.  But 
that  little  drop  of  gall  has  caused  many  of  those 
who  are  trying  to  educate  him,  to  view  their  mis- 
sion exclusively  from  the  selfish-utilitarian  stand- 
point. These  enthusiasts  have  themselves  put  the 
Negro  on  the  defensive  as  to  his  right  to  pursue 
other  forms  of  culture.  And  that  is  why  many  of 
his  best  friends  and  the  ablest  thinkers  of  his  own 
race  have  insisted  and  do  insist  that  the  race  needs 
not  only  farm-hands,  domectic  servants,  carpen- 
ters and  other  industrial  workers,  but  also  business 
men,  doctors,  lawyers  and  well  educated  preach- 
ers. The  white  people  who  desire  that  the  Negro 
be  a  separate  race  in  America,  often  fail  to  see 
that  this  very  separateness  would  make  it  more 
imperative  that  the  race  develop  all  occupations 
and  professions  and  advance  along  all  line^.  I 
heard  a  white  speaker,  at  a  great  missionary  meet- 
ing held  "on  behalf  of  Negro  education,"  say: 


THE  NEW  NEGRO  239 

We  want  the  Negroes  to  produce  farmers  and 
other  industrial  workers, — we  already  have  plenty 
of  lawyers,  doctors,  historians  and  poets.  His 
"we"  could  not  really  include  the  Negro,  about 
whom  he  was  supposed  to  be  speaking,  for  the 
Negro  has  very  few  lawyers,  doctors,  historians 
and  poets, — and  the  white  historian  and  poet  will 
not  really  write  the  Negro's  history  nor  sing  his 
songs.  ! 

The  new  Negro  is  a  sober,  sensible  creature, 
conscious  of  his  environment,  knowing  that  not  all 
is  right,  but  trying  hard  to  become  adjusted  to  this 
civilization  in  which  he  finds  himself  by  no  will 
or  choice  of  his  own.  He  is  not  the  shallow,  vain, 
showy  creature  which  he  is  sometimes  advertised 
to  be.  He  still  hopes  that  the  unreasonable  op- 
position to  his  forward  and  upward  progress  will 
relent.  But,  at  any  rate,  he  is  resolved  to  fight, 
and  live  or  die,  on  the  side  of  God  and  the  Eter- 
nal Verities. 


'For  thence, — a  paradox 
Which  comforts  while  it  mocks, — 
Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail. 

FINIS. 


